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CRAQUE-O’-DOOM 


A STORY. 



M. H. CATHERWOOD. 



ILLUSTRA TED. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & 

i88i. 


CO. 


Copyright, 1881, by J. B. LIPPINCOTT & Co. 




CONTENTS 


<1 

CHAPTER PAGB 

I. — Chenoworth’s Damsel 5 

II. — The Chenoworths 14 

III. — “ Seeds of Time” 24 

IV. — Preparation 38 

V. — An Arrival 48 

VI. — “Isn’t He Horrible?” 55 

VII. — A Nabob 60 

VHI. — “Why Don’t You Shudder?” , , ,68 

IX. — The Flight of a White-Head . . .73 

X. — “Give Me Your Hand” 85 

XI. — Their Plans . ' 93 

XII. — Tillie 104 

XHI. — The Odd Preliminary 116 

XIV. — “But Afterward” 124 

XV. — “Are You Happier Now?” .... 132 

XVI. — Further Acquaintance 140 

XVII.— “ He is Tall” 147 

XVHI. — Letters 158 

XIX. — Return of a Native 172 

XX. — “Your Weddin’-Expenses” . . . .183 

XXI. — A Brother 197 

XXII.— Two Men 210 

XXIII.— “ Place Hands” 222 

XXIV. — “You Ought to Know” 229 


3 


9 


CRAQUE-O’-DOOM 


CHAPTER I. 
chenoworth’s damsel. 

Like two night-birds who had strayed into the 
wrong season, a pair of girls flopped about on the 
snowy walk or huddled together outside of the 
Hill- house. The house was lighted. They could 
see, through one uncovered window, which ex- 
tended to the veranda floor, the ruby gates, the 
cut-glass candelabra, and the luxurious furniture. 
The girls were on the west side of the house, 
which was a large square structure with exten- 
sions at the rear. 

Below the hill an old turnpike town straggled 
eastward, its lights barely twinkling through a win- 
ter fog. The evergreens and old forest-trees all 
around the grounds were weighted with soft snow, 
and there were occasional slides from the roof 
which dropped with a half-liquid splash. 

The sound of a piano made the air delicious 
to these girls outside. Light falling upon them 
I* 5 


6 


CRAQUE-O^-DOOM. 


from the window showed that one wore an old 
shawl over her head, and the other a dirty hood. 
The dusk blurred their outlines, and they shrank 
farther into it every time a pair of waltzers inside 
whirled near the window. 

The waltzing pair were also two girls, near one 
age, beautifully draped, glowing, and handsome. 
Another young lady, in an outline of pearl-gray, 
could be seen at the piano. She threw her hands 
about with abandon, and a ring or two flashed in 
the firelight. 

“ I wish I knew how they done that,” said the 
taller of the girls outside anxiously. “ Ketch hold 
of me that way, Tillie, and le’s see if we can’t do 
it.” 

Tillie obediently caught hold of her sister, but, 
being much smaller, could only reach her elbows. 
Placing their toes near together, they spun round 
with the motion of a top. 

“’Tisn’t the way,” pronounced the older girl 
despondently. “ I could do it, though, just as 
good as they do, if I knew how they fixed their 
feet.” 

The piano and the waltzers went on. Tillie was 
not willing to stop : she spun ahead after her sister 
released her, inventing steps and skips. 

Don’t go so close to the window : they’ll see 

ye.” 

Tillie dropped back. The piano, as the waltzers 


CHENO WORTH'S DAMSEL. 


7 

flagged and began to promenade arm in arm, 
leaped from the waltz to a quick, gay melody, and 
Til lie’s arms and feet responded. 

“ Can you knock that tune ?” inquired her guide, 
philosopher, and friend in the old shawl. 

The child ‘‘ knocked” it to a nicety. Her cow- 
hide shoes were dulled by the snow, but their 
muffled pat was true to the music. The figure she 
danced could not be called by any name. It was 
not a jig or a clog, — she had never heard of such 
things, — nor a double-shuffle such as plantation 
darkies and the rustic foot everywhere delight in. 
It was a skipping, patting dance of her own. She 
put her hands on her hips : from them downward 
she was electric motion and flopping scant skirt ; 
from them upward, immobility and gravity. Her 
breathing became audible, but she knocked away. 
Her older sister sat down in a chair they had with 
them, and watched her. She knocked herself 
into the bar of light and out again. She was in a 
rapture of motion, when the other jumped up and 
a gate clanged. 

“There’s Tom Mills cornin’ from down town. 
Le’s hurry in : he’ll ketch us.” 

Tillie immediately took hold of her side of the 
chair, and, carrying it between them, they hastened 
toward the kitchen-door and knocked. 

A colored man opened the door. Neal had 
come to his present home a contraband, sent 


8 


CRAQUE-O'-DOOM. 


North by Captain Mills at the close of the war. 
From a shuffling boy he had grown into a colored 
gentleman who conducted the gardening and the 
stables at the Hill-house. He also moved the 
heavy machinery of housekeeping: fires and er- 
rands depended on him. He had grown to his 
place, and ornamented it with a good-looking black 
face and ceremonious airs. But there was one 
thing in the world that Neal hated, that thing 
being a poor white : he could see no use in such a 
person. With all a negro’s respect for what he 
considers magnificent, and contempt for small re- 
sources, Neal would rather have been kicked by 
Captain Mills — though he never was — than fairly 
spoken by any of the Chenoworths. The Cheno- 
worths were the “ lowest-down lot” he knew. 
When the two girls on the step faced him he was 
stirred by an antagonism of race begun, perhaps, 
generations back in Tennessee, before a Cheno^ 
worth had come to Ohio. 

“ We brought home the chair Aunt Sally Tea- 
garden sent to daddy to get a bottom put in it,” 
said the elder girl. 

“ Oh, yes,” said Neal, receiving it. “ It’s just 
a kitchen chair. Didn’t know she’s your aunt 
Sally.” 

“ Folks always calls her so,” returned the girl 
curtly. 

“ Didn’t know she was aunt to Chinnyworth’s 


CHENO WORTH'S DAMSEL. g 

Damsel,” persisted Neal, putting the chair against 
the wall as he chuckled sarcastically. 

“ My name ain’t Chinnyworth’s Damsel,” said 
the girl, letting the shawl drop from her head and 
standing in the kitchen before her sister. There 
was only a ruddy light of wood-coals in the stove, 
beside which Neal had been basking. The cook 
was down-cellar with the light. 

“ That’s what folks always calls you,” said Neal, 
— “Chinnyworth’s Damsel. Ain’t got no other 
name, have ye ?” 

“ It’s Tamsin,” said the girl with a heavy intona- 
tion. She was scowling, and the little one, taking 
the cue from her, was scowling also. “ You mind 
your black business.” 

“ Them is mighty ellygant words. Shows your 
bringin’ up.” 

Tamsin looked at him fiercely. She had a pair 
of black eyes which suggested lancets. The 
stove-light threw her head into relief against the 
dark door. She was olive-colored, with flaxen 
hair. All the Chenoworths were tow-headed, but 
their type comprised almost invariably, in addi- 
tion, livid skins and weak blue eyes. The younger 
sister showed the impress of her ancestry. She 
was yellow, flaxen, and blue-eyed, but she had a 
mouth and jaw which gave individuality to her 
little face. Her lips were rosy, and she had rows 
of small shining teeth which seemed to extend 


10 


CRAQUE-O'-DOOM. 


from ear to ear. This gave her a gay, good- 
natured look. She held to her sister’s dress with 
one claw-hand and looked at Neal with dislike. 

I’ll tell Mis’ Teagard’ you brought the chair,” 
said Neal more kindly. ” I’s just a-teasin’ you 
when I called you Chinny worth’s Damsel.” 

I’m goin’ in to see her myself.” 

“ Wouldn’t, now,” argued Neal. They’s young 
ladies — visitors — in there.” 

S’pose I’m afraid o’ seein’ them ? They ain’t 
no better than / am.” 

Phu !” ejaculated Neal behind her back. 

She made her way, without any announcement, 
through the half-lighted dining-room, with Tillie 
beside her, and presently appeared at the ruby 
grate, where Aunt Sally Teagarden sat alternately 
knitting and turning the leaves of a book on a 
table. 

This noble-looking, portly old lady, with hair as 
white as puffs of thistle-down on her rounded tem- 
ples, looked up quickly from her treatise and gave 
the two girls a pleasant “ Good-evening.” She had 
a peculiar twitching of the corners of her mouth 
when she spoke, not at all unbecoming to her, but 
of which she was quite unconscious, Come up 
to the fire, Tamsin and Tillie,” she said, with a 
twist of benign expression. 

“ We brought home your cheer,” said Tamsin, 
spreading her fingers to the fire. 


CHENOWORTH^S DAMSEL. 


II 


“Oh, you brought home that chair? Well, 
Thomas is in the other room, and when he comes 
out ril get the money to send to your father. My 
pocket-book is up-stairs.” 

A male voice and the voices of girls sounded 
through the open archway of a parlor which 
branched from the side of this. Tamsin wanted 
to see the young-lady visitors, but in order to do 
so she would have to walk boldly up the room. 

“ Take seats,” said Captain Mills’s aunt ; and 
Tamsin sat down on a haircloth cushion, but 
Tillie stood by the mantel, resting one foot upon 
the other. 

Aunt Sally glanced through her glasses at the 
new page of her treatise. “ I am just reading a 
little in Andrew Jackson Davis’s great book while 
I knit,” she observed benignly, willing to share 
her favorite ism with anybody. “ It’s a wonderful 
book. Remarkable what a power of language he 
has. Has your mother finished reading that Ban- 
ner of Light I sent her ?” 

“ She pasted it up on the wall,” said Tillie. Her 
sister was listening to the other voices. 

“ Well,” said Aunt Sally, pushing up her glasses, 
“ I didn’t intend that. But perhaps,” with energetic 
twists of her mouth, “that is as good a way as 
any to keep some of the remarkable seances in 
her mind. There was a beautiful account in that 
paper, given by Mrs. Cora L. V. Hatch, of com- 


12 


Q UE- a -DO OM. 


muning with a spirit from New Jersey.” She went 
on rapidly, pouring Spiritualistic lore into her 
hearers. 

Their eyes wandered up to the high ceiling and 
down the tinted walls, over velvet carpet and 
painted landscapes, bronze busts and a cabinet- 
world of bric-a-brac. Tillie started when the 
mantel-clock told the half-hour with a chime like 
music. 

‘‘Now, aunt,” said Captain Mills, sauntering 
through the archway. — “Good-evening,” in short 
parenthesis to the girls. — “ I hear the Spiritualist 
drum beating a rally.” 

“ Thomas,” replied his aunt, “ I never expect 
you to be a believer. The construction of your 
mind is such that you will not accept the most 
positive proofs. And I never thrust my opinions 
on anybody. The girls here are waiting. Have 
you got some change about you to pay for reseat- 
ing a chair ?” 

The captain went into his pockets, and, having 
ascertained what amount was wanted, paid it. While 
he did so, Tamsin watched him with speculative 
eyes. He was her single type of a gentleman. 

He had come home from the army as hairy as a 
monkey, the townpeople said, but at this date he 
was a smooth-shaven, prematurely iron-gray man 
of perhaps forty, with a thick black moustache and 
smiling eyes. He bore a family resemblance to 


CHENOWORTirs DAMSEL. 


13 

his aunt, having her smoothly-rounded temples 
and high-arched head. The benignity displayed 
in her face became graver in his. 

*^Are you busy at anything now, Tamsin?” 
inquired Aunt Sally. 

“ No, ma’am,” replied the girl, fingering the 
money in the corner of her shawl. 

“Then you might come here and help about 
the house while we have company. There are a 
good many things up-stairs and around that need 
attention when the whole house is in use. I 
thought about sending down to see if your mother 
could let you come.” 

“ She won’t care. Have you got a good many 
visitors ?” 

“ Three young ladies, — the captain’s cousin and 
two of her friends. They came to spend the holi- 
days with us. Very well. In the morning, then.” 

“ I can come back to-night, after I take Tillie 
home.” 

Captain Mills was sauntering off through the 
archway. 

“ If you are not afraid of the dark — ” suggested 
Aunt Sally. 

Chenoworth’s daughter smiled slowly. What 
difference did it make to anybody whether she was 
afraid of the dark or not ? “I can run right quick.” 

“ Well, you might come back to-night, then.” 


14 


CRAQUE-a-DOOM. 


CHAPTER II. 

THE CHENOWORTHS. 

Tamsin and her sister ran down the hill, crossed 
the pike, and walked along the middle of the 
road which led toward their back-street residence. 
Some dogs jumped out of the enclosures around 
large houses and barked at them. Though there 
was little traffic on the old canal at that time, Tillie 
was moved to point at a light far off floating se- 
renely through the fog and say, “ There goes a 
boat.” 

“ Tisn’t !” observed Tamsin, hugging her shawl ; 

must be a lantern around the tavern.” 

They came to their home, standing dejected, un- 
painted, and humble in a wilderness of dried corn- 
stalks which rustled sadly in every breath of air, 
their dull bleached outlines suggesting ranks of 
diminutive ghosts. 

Tamsin opened the door and looked in at a 
scene she had never loved. The interior was bare 
and coarse and smelled of onions. There was the 
open fire, but its light was dull. Her mother sat 
mending stockings by a tallow candle ; her father 
s^ooped over the hearth smoking. He was a de- 


THE CHENOWORTHS. 


15 

cent old man who seemed to have given his family 
up as a hard problem. Sarah Jane sat there hold- 
ing her baby. Arthur had come in, and John and 
George had for once forborne to go down town, 
and were growling at each other. All, excepting 
Sarah Jane, looked clay-colored and bleached, as 
if the weather had held them at its mercy for gen- 
erations. 

Tamsin disliked her family. She had no filial 
affection for her parents. Their apathy and gen- 
eral thriftlessness roused unexpressed indignation 
in her. She felt her existence as an indignity 
which they had cast upon her. She compared 
them with people whom she considered admirable, 
and silently hated them. She hated the two lazy 
boys who crowded her in the humble house. Her 
scorn was of the high-bred sort which shows no 
outward sign but indifference. When they ate 
their food she despised their loud chewing, their 
greedy dipping into dishes. When they lounged 
down town with their hands in their pockets she 
despised them for following the gypsy instincts of 
their blood, and avoiding, or accomplishing nothing 
by, labor. She was a magazine of silent rebellions 
and hatreds. No empress ever had a mightier 
pride or stronger will. The spirit which her peo- 
ple had lacked for generations was perhaps con- 
centrated in her. She resented all her conditions 
of life. Under its pressure she was old. In a less 


i6 


CRAQUE-0^~D00M. 


aggressive way, she was as cynical as Timon. A 
reticent and dignity-loving nature thus became se- 
cretive. But, while silently denying the stock from 
which she sprang, this girl had been known to 
scratch her school-fellows for disrespect toward 
the name of Chenoworth. It seemed to her secret 
consciousness the last humiliation of all that folks 
should ever know how she despised the Cheno- 
worths herself. There was vast endurance in her. 
Natural girlish delicacy and sensitiveness, which in 
her were extreme, had long since protected them- 
selves by a thick shell. At that time she had no 
room for more than one strong affection : she loved 
her youngest sister, and she loved nothing else. 

Tillie pulled off her hood and approached the 
fire, but Tamsin merely stood and announced that 
she was going back. 

“ I wouldn’t work for them proud things,” said 
Sarah Jane, who had an aquiline nose and lines 
which made a triangle of her chin. 

Mrs. Chenoworth had nothing to say: her 
children always did as they pleased. She looked 
up, and observing that her nephew Arthur was 
about to leave the house also, suggested plain- 
tively, “ Stay longer, Arter.” 

I guess I’ll walk along a piece with Tamsin,” 
said Arthur. 

“ I guess you won’t!” retorted Tamsin scornfully. 

I don’t want you along of me.” 


THE CHENOWORTHS. 


17 

** You’ll get over your spiteful ways, miss,” re- 
marked Sarah Jane, “ when you’ve seen the trouble 
I’ve seen.” 

Tillie clasped the black-eyed alien round the 
waist, and they looked most confidingly into each 
other’s eyes. 

“ Come up to-morrow,” said Tamsin. 

“ I will,” replied Tillie. 

“ Don’t kick the kivverofif to-night. You might 
git a bad sore throat again.” 

“ Then mammy’d make me poultice it,” laughed 
Tillie. 

“ I s’pose,” remarked Arthur as he left the door 
behind Tamsin, “ you wouldn’t have anything 
against me walkin’ on the other side of the road 
from you if I’s goin’ the same way ?” 

She did not reply or wait to see which side he 
chose. Her shawled head flitted away from him, 
though he could hear heavy shoes beating the 
snow till their rush died in the distance. 

As Tamsin ran up the hill the oldest of the 
young-lady guests was holding a skein of yarn for 
Aunt Sally to wind, and saying, while Captain 
Mills and the girls were occupied with themselves, 
that she did wish Aunt Sally would tell her some 
of her recollections or experiences. The girls had 
said she knew charming Irish fairy-stories. 

The wee folk,” said Aunt Sally, pulling off a 
long thread. 
b 


2* 


i8 


CRAQUE-O'-DOOM. 


Yes, but Miss Rhoda Jones preferred to hear 
about real folks, — the people in this little town, for 
instance. Mrs. Teagarden must know all about 
them, — their peculiarities and trials and unwritten 
histories. 

Aunt Sally knew that Miss Jones was what is 
called a “ writer,” and that this was a hook thrown 
out for a good catch of “material;” but she in- 
clined toward furnishing material. She was con- 
vinced that if she had not lived a busy practical 
life she would have been literary herself. Andrew 
Jackson Davis and Mrs. Cora L. V. Hatch were 
dearer to her because they “ wrote.” There had 
been one lovely school-girl niece in the family, 
Captain Tom’s sister, who died at her blossoming, 
but whose poems were turning yellow in Aunt 
Sally’s treasure-box. How could she look other- 
wise than affectionately on an author, when her 
namesake-girl had been prevented only by death 
from taking the lead in letters ? 

“ Well,” said Aunt Sally, with an energetic pre- 
liminary twist of the mouth, “ most of the trials 
of the people about here are caused, as they 
usually are, I have observed, by their own thrift- 
lessness or carelessness. The Chenoworth girls 
came in here awhile ago, and I was reading 
Andrew Jackson Davis’s book: someway, I got 
to thinking of the strength of hereditary tenden- 
cies.” 


THE CHENOWORTHS. 


19 

Chenoworth ?” questioned Miss Jones as she 
turned her head for the passage of the yarn. 
“That’s rather a pretty name, — much higher- 
sounding than Jones.’’ 

“ The people who know them wouldn’t say so,” 
continued Aunt Sally, always with the beneficent 
twitching. “ It’s a name that means around here 
everything base and good-for-nothing. I have 
known the Chenoworths from my childhood, and 
I never saw one of them amount to anything, ex- 
cept one that died in Tom’s company during the 
war, and he was a notorious thief before he ’listed. 
But it’s a shame to bring up charges against the 
country’s dead,’’ Aunt Sally admonished herself 
solemnly. “ He was sent home in his box after 
Lookout Mountain : Tom saw that he was sent 
home.’’ 

“ There are girls in the family, you said ?’’ 

“ Oh, yes : there is a large connection of them, 
— all about alike, except that the younger ones 
seem to grow worse than the old ones. I heard it 
said there was a solid county of them in Tennes- 
see before they moved to Ohio. Always living 
from hand to mouth, the men usually with no 
trades or business of any kind, and the women 
struggling to support prolific families.” 

“ Poor things !” 

“Yes, indeed! Such people are always multi- 
plying their helpless offspring. I have thought 


20 


CRA Q UE- O'-D 0 OM. 


sometimes Tamsin might turn out a little different 
from the rest, and I do what I can for her and en- 
courage her; but,” the old lady paused in her 
winding to say impressively, “ hereditary tenden- 
cies are stronger than life itself. Her history was 
all written down before she was born.” 

Tamsin?” murmured Miss Jones. 

“ Yes. She was here with her little sister awhile 
ago. I feel sorry for that girl. Nobody knows 
any harm of her, but what good can she ever 
come to ?” 

“Why not?” 

“The name of the family will drag her down. 
Good’blood,” said Aunt Sally, who saw it coursing 
gently through the thin veins on her very round 
and handsome wrist, “ is the best inheritance a 
child can have. But where a stock has sunk be- 
low respectability as far back as you can trace it, 
what can you expect of it?” 

“ How old is this Tamsin?” 

“ About fifteen or sixteen, I should think.” 

“ Pretty ?” 

“ Not to my notion. She had a sister who was 
called rather pretty, — Sarah Jane. Sarah Jane 
went up to the capital to learn millinery, and she’s 
just home with a child in her arms, trying to give 
it away to somebody to raise, I hear. There was 
poor Mary. She was the oldest girl of the set, 
and she did real well for a while. One of our rich 


THE CHENOWORTHS. 


21 


farmers’ wives took her and made a daughter of 
her ; and I have always thought it was fate against 
the poor child, and not her fault, that she didn’t do 
better. The family she lived with made every- 
thing of her. Mary was good-looking, — that is, 
as near good-looking as I ever saw a Chenoworth. 
She had a beau, and I think he disappointed her. 
It would have been a fine match for her, and she 
certainly loved him. But he went off, and she 
turned and married one of her trifling cousins: 
the Chenoworths intermarry to that degree it 
seems as if they can’t mate with anybody outside 
of their own stock. So there the poor thing is, 
tied down for life, with half a dozen miserable 
little ones to follow her around and no living pro- 
vided for them. The farmer’s family were so in- 
dignant at her throwing herself away that they 
would have nothing to do with her.” 

Poor thing !” 

*‘Yes. And there was the oldest, — Sam. He 
married Mary Mann. He was a poOr half-witted 
thing, and she lived a jade’s life ; and finally she 
took poison one night, and he lay there drunk be- 
side her, and she told him what she had done and 
begged him to help her. While she groaned and 
cried, * Well,’ said he, ' you oughtn’t to took it 1’ 
and went to sleep. When he waked in the morn- 
ing she was cold.” 

Miss Jones hid her face on her arm. She saw 


22 


CRAQUE-O'^-DOOM. 


the dying and helpless woman, and felt the tragedy 
through every nerve. 

“ The second boy is in the county jail for steal- 
ing, and the two young ones are common loafers. 
Old Mr. Chenoworth is a harmless creature, so far 
as I know, and his wife doesn’t seem to be a lazy 
woman, but probably in the generation before him 
are to be found the seeds which ripened in this.” 
The chronicler ended with a meditative twitch of 
her mouth. 

That poor girl !” mused the other. 

“Tamsin? Sometimes I think there is some- 
thing in Tamsin.” 

“ Why couldn’t she study ? Why couldn’t she 
make a woman of herself?” 

Aunt Sally shook her wise head : “ It isn’t in - 
the stock to take to education : they are all ig- 
norant. Once in a while I send a copy of the 
Banner of Light there, but I doubt if any of them 
read it.” 

“ Or if she had some talent that would lift her 
up?” 

“Tamsin hasn’t any gifts out of the common, 
that I ever heard of. She’s just a good ordinary 
girl.” 

Rhoda Jones shook her head slowly, having this 
melancholy figure in her mind : “ It is like living 
under some crushing weight, or in swamps where 
the live-oak moss would make one want to com- 


THE CHENOWORTHS. 


23 


mit suicide, — worse than being a homeless and 
kinless orphan. If she were an orphan without 
relatives, somebody would take pity on her, but, 
as she has too many relatives, they despise her.” 

“ She’ll probably marry her cousin Arthur, a 
hulk of a fellow; but he hasn’t much harm in him 
— or anything else. Some one told me he was 
hanging after her. And she’ll go the way of the 
rest of them.” 

The dining-room door, which had stood ajar, 
moved silently back, and Tamsin came in with her 
shawl around her shoulders. 


24 


CRAQUE-a-DOOM. 


CHAPTER III. 

‘'seeds of time.” 

Both speakers looked at her with a start, but 
Tamsin’s face gave no sign of what she had heard. 
She did not meet their eyes, but went and sat down 
some distance from them in the unconscious dig- 
nity of loneliness. Rather than have them know 
that she had heard and was tormented by this 
formulated statement from other tongues of her 
own nebulous convictions, she would have hugged 
her blistering shame in secrecy if it killed her. 

Aunt Sally felt disturbed, and the fountain of 
her kindness flowed : “ Come nearer to the fire, 
Tamsin. Ain’t you cold?” 

“ No, ma’am.” 

“Is it thawing out-doors?” inquired Miss Rho- 
da, wishing to open communication between this 
girl and herself. 

“ Toler’ble soft.” She sat as immovable as an 
Indian, her eyelids lowered. ^ 

Rhoda scanned her with two or three keen 
looks, and, finding this scrutiny apparently unno- 
ticed, studied her with a silent gaze, turning her 
skein-supporting hands now to this side, now to 


SEEDS OF time: 


that. There is great force in her/’ thought Miss 
Jones, — “ an individuality which is going to assert 
itself. She looks good : the oval of her cheeks is 
splendid. How do people who rarely have enough 
to eat get up that curve and rich olive color ? Black 
eyebrows and eyelashes and light hair ! A reticent 
expression, but one, also, that seems to be absorb- 
ing everything around.” 

Aunt Sally wound the last end of yarn upon her 
ball. “ Now, Tamsin,” said she, rising, “ you come 
with me up-stairs, and I’ll show you what to do 
jthere.” 

Captain Mills and the girls were very merry in 
the other parlor, and after gazing at the fire awhile 
Miss Rhoda joined them. At eleven o’clock he 
bade them good-night. 

Aunt Sally always retired at nine, after ordering 
breakfast and seeing to the fastening of all the 
doors. She left Tamsin the choice of going to 
bed at that time or sitting up until the young la- 
dies had gone, to see that the fires were well down 
and read Andrew Jackson Davis. Tamsin took 
her place with no light but that of the grate, and 
without Andrew Jackson Davis, on a small sofa 
beside the arch connecting the parlors, where the 
group of young ladies could not see her. Her ob- 
ject was to look at them as much as she pleased. 
As to their talk, she did not think of overhearing 
it, yet when she began to notice it she listened 
B 3 


26 


CKAQUE- O' -DOOM. 


keenly. Jennie Mills, who was really a beautiful 
brown girl, pleased her eye. Louise Latta, a very 
sweet-natured blonde, was pronounced by Tamsin 
the image of pride, because she had pretty airs and 
turns of the head and a fine clock-stockinged and 
slippered foot resting on the fender. The Cheno- 
worth doubted not they all three considered her as 
the dirt under their soles. She put out her own 
foot and looked furtively at it. The leather was 
heavy around its shape, and that looked big com- 
pared to the one on the fender. Jennie Mills threw 
up her hands to exclaim, “ Oh, girls !” and Tamsin 
looked at her own hands, — not white and sparkling 
with ornaments, but chapped and red. More at- 
tractive to her than the others was Rhoda Jones, 
the wearer of the pearl-gray dress, who had played 
the piano. How wonderful it must be to play the 
piano ! She seemed to be a person who could do 
anything she wished. 

Tamsin tried to detect how the other two “ did” 
their hair. There they all three sat toasting them- 
selves by the deeply-red fire, saying they must go 
to bed, but lingering to tell a story or a joke. 
What good times rich folks’ girls had ! 

“ If we go up-stairs,” said Jennie, “ there are 
only the registers, and of course the furnace-fire 
must be low : so let’s bask as long as we can. Oh, 
how I should love to spend every winter in Florida ! 
Cold weather kills me.” 


SEEDS OF TIMEF 


27 

** You ought to marry a Southerner, Jen,” sug- 
gested Louise. 

^‘And have the yellow fever every summer? 

You horrid thing!” 

“ Oh, you could spend the summers with us.” 

“ How silly you girls would be to think of 
marrying at your age I” exclaimed Rhoda. 

“We don’t think of it: it’s the farthest possible 
thing from our thoughts. But look here, Rhoda 
Jones : we’re twenty-two, — that is, I am, and Lou 
is going to be soon. Gracious I we’re pretty near 
old maids I” 

“ Old maids,” said Rhoda scornfully, “ are things 
of the past.” 

“ I know they are,” said Louise : “ they feel it ^ 
themselves.” 

“ No, they don’t. Come to that. Pm one.” 

“You don’t look a day older than we do, 
Rhode.” 

“ Why, certainly I do ! I’ve years of experience 
and thought that you don’t know anything about. 

But I tell you the scarecrow old maid is a thing of 
the past : it was set up to frighten silly women 
away from the fields of independence. The woman 
of to-day, when she gets ready to marry, marries, and 
it doesn’t make any difference to her whether she’s 
twenty-five or a hundred. We don’t live in the 
hard conditions that our grandmothers lived in. 

We aren’t old at forty any more; our bodies ripen 


y 


28 


CRAQUE-O-'-DOOM. 


on instead of withering. We learn how to take 
care of them and how to bring ourselves in happy 
relations to society, and we get a few dabs of art- 
knowledge ; and literature is a mighty preservative 
of the tissues. When I was fifteen I was a skinny 
little thing; but look here.” She held up one 
half-revealed plump arm, and her face seemed to 
sparkle. “I just learned how to live, and I’m 
going to live — all over, every faculty of me — as 
many days as are granted.” 

“ Now, come, Rhode,” coaxed Jennie, catching 
the uplifted hand : “ do tell us if there’s anything 
in this splendid turquoise ring.” 

“ My finger, as you see.” 

If / were engaged,” remarked Louise in an 
injured tone, — “ and, mind, I don’t say I ain’t, but — 
I should tell my friends about it some time, espe- 
cially my real old friends.” 

Well, you two ancient goddesses — ” 

** Ah, Rhoda, you are !” 

“ Of course I am. Because I expect to be mar- 
ried before very long.” 

The other girls uttered little squalls and crowded 
closer to her : “ Oh, tell us all about it. Is he light 
or dark? Is he real fascinating? Oh, what is his 
name ? Is it Smith ? Is it some gentleman where 
you are living now? Oh, Rhoda Jones, to think 
we have known you all our lives and don’t know 
who you are going to marry !” 


SEEDS OF time: 


“ I meant to tell you when I got around to it. 
Why, what’s the use of making such a fuss about 
it ? Marriage is only an incident in men’s lives, 
— an important one, of course, — and why should it 
be more in ours ?” 

“ Mercy, Rhode ! you’re getting to be strong- 
minded. But, oh, do tell us his name !” 

His name is Mr. Burns.” 

“ Burns ? That sounds nice.” 

“ Of course it does : it is nice. I shan’t be 
Burne-Jones, but Jones-Burns. He is a most 
agreeable old gentleman.” 

” Old !” Both girls emitted a low shriek. 

“Why, certainly! You don’t think I would 
marry a boy, do you ? Don’t you know I’m 
thirty ? but I think I shall stay twenty-nine until 
after the wedding, — not that I am afraid of thirty, 
but twenty-nine seems a more interesting age to 
be married at. Yes, and the top of his head is 
bald.” 

“ Bald 1” Both girls emitted another choral 
shriek. 

“ Oh, you needn’t make a fuss. He has a very 
nice fringe above his ears and around the back of 
his head.” 

“ And is he rich ?” 

“Yes, of course he is rich. Do you think I 
have been poor and deserving all my life to bestow 
myself on a poverty-stricken husband at last?” 

3 * 


30 


CRAQUE-0''-D00M. 


Tamsin was listening intently to these revelations 
from a higher sphere. She leaned farther forward 
to ponder on the speaker. Was that proud, com- 
manding, well-dressed girl poor ? Here she was, 
a guest in a rich man’s house and going to marry 
another rich man. The Chenoworth division of 
all society was simply into rich and poor. The 
rich were favored in every way; the poor were 
necessarily down-trodden. How, then, was that 
girl different from Tamsin Chenoworth, being poor, 
according to her own testimony ? In a dim way 
Tamsin comprehended that there was a strong in- 
dividual spirit in that pearl-colored figure, and that 
education was a species of riches. Her mental re- 
ceptiveness was roused to the fullest action. Rhoda 
loomed before her suddenly a vast example. What 
Rhoda said became seed, which she strewed plen- 
teously without knowing it. 

I used to think,” exclaimed Jennie, that you 
and Cousin Tom might make a match some 
time.” 

” Captain Tom ? I don’t see how you could 
think that, when we’ve always been such excellent 
friends.” 

Louise looked up from the grate with a pensive 
expression : Are you very much in love ?” 

” With my future prospects ? Yes, I am. I’m 
going to have everything I ever wanted, and a 
comfortable husband who knows my untamed 


SEEDS OF time: 


ways and won’t thwart me.” Rhoda took out a 
great many hair-pins and let her mass of hair come 
down to her waist while she declaimed to the two 
fair faces near her. “ If there is anything on earth 
I am sick and tired of, it is all this nonsense about 
sentiment. Now, there you sit, both of you, 
stuffed full of love-stories without a grain of prac- 
tical sense in one of them, expecting a knight, if 
only in the shape of dear, simple Davy Crockett, 
to ride up and carry you off. When you see that 
very excellent backwoods play — it has literary 
merits — don’t your heart-strings ring to Davy’s 
rough rendering of * Young Lochinvar’ ? ‘ I want 

my bride,’ says the knight. — ‘ Git out !’ says the 
dad. — ‘ Whoop !’ says the knight ; and he disap- 
pears from the scene with the willing young 
lady. That’s all very entertaining, but I like civil- 
ization. Not to put too fine a point on it, I like 
luxury.” 

So did Tamsin, though she had never defined her 
delight in beautiful and sumptuous surroundings. 

And I can’t do without it,” continued Rhoda. 
“ I like the things money will buy, and rve‘‘never 
had enough to buy them. In the Middle Ages, 
when everybody was fighting against everybody 
else, the strongest baron was the safest man to 
have for a husband. Money is the feudal power 
to-day; the strongest baron now is the man who 
can make the most money.” 




32 


CRAQUE-a-DOOM. 


“ I should be afraid to marry for money,” sighed 
Jennie. Her thoughts flew to a very handsome 
youth in her father’s law-ofiice. 

“You’d a great deal better be afraid to marry 
without it.” 

“ But is it quite right ?” murmured Louise. 

“You’ve been reading Miss Mulock’s novels,’* 
puffed Rhoda scornfully. “ I haven’t a bit of 
patience with that woman. She harps on the 
same old silly string year after year, and you girls 
listen and weep and long for an impecunious young 
man on the altar of whose fortunes you can make 
a sacrifice of your youth and comfort. Don’t you 
know that the key-note of the times is not senti- 
ment, but practical sense? Just after the war, 
when the country was wrought to a high pitch of 
nerves, current literature overflowed with self-sac- 
rifice. According to that showing, — and current 
literature ought to be a good reflection of the 
times, — everybody was running around trying to 
outdo his neighbor in the broken-heart and self- 
renunciation business. One heroine gave up her 
lover to a friend who fancied him ; another sacri- 
ficed her future prospects to nurse somebody. All 
that sort of thing was ‘ nobte.’ I think it was 
mawkish. It isn’t natural and human. I am a 
healthy, selfish girl, — not mean or unjust, — but I 
have had some sharp, and even cruel, experiences. 
I know to my own satisfaction that poverty causes 


** SEEDS OF time: 


more evil than perhaps anything else in the world, 
and that easy circumstances are a great nourisher 
of the virtues. Why should I let my own obser- 
vations go for nothing and take the dictum of 
sentimentalists who have no gauge for my individ- 
ual life ? Ah ! dear Charles Lamb!” mused Rhoda, 
leaning forward and resting her elbow on her knee. 
‘‘He told the truth, for he had felt the pinch: 
‘ Goodly legs and shoulders of mutton, exhil- 
arating cordials, books, pictures, the opportunities 
of seeing foreign countries, independence, heart’s 
ease, a man’s own time to himself, are not mucky 
however we may be pleased to scandalize with that 
appellation the faithful metal that provides them 
for us.” 

“ Oh, my I I should hate to be real poor and 
nobody at all, and have no parties or dresses or 
good times,” exclaimed Jennie. 

“ So should I,” murmured Louise. “ But then 
I should hate to marry a man I didn’t like at all.” 

“ The man I am going to marry,” said Rhoda, 
tossing her head back and winding her hair in a 
knot, “ I do decidedly like. As to being in love 
with him, I am not a bit so; that would be very 
disagreeable and give him an advantage over me. 
Besides, love is a fleeting quality, while you can 
put your hand on abundant means and always find 
them there. I have been desperately in love — ” 

“Oh, Rhoda!” 


34 


CRAQUE-O’-DOOM 


“And desperately disgusted with it; while I 
find that comfort never disgusts me. I like power 
and a good position.” 

(“ rd like such things too,” thought Tamsin.) 

“ And I like travel and culture. It is very kind 
of this excellent man to lift the burden of life from 
me and give me the delicious sensation of not 
having to slave for an actual living, — though, of 
course. I’ve always tried to get a full life. I ex- 
pect him to have faults, and acknowledge it is not 
agreeable to hear him drinking as if his oesophagus 
was outside instead of inside his throat, and smack- 
ing his mouth at table. Still, I can forgive him 
that. A man whom I doted on might let me carry 
my own packages or pierce me with unmerited 
reproaches. My observation is that men can be 
very tyrannical and abusive toward the women 
of their families.” 

(“ Oh, can’t they, though !” muttered Tamsin, 
breathing through closed teeth.) 

“ Therefore I want to protect myself as much as 
possible from the miseries of matrimony. A girl 
of my acquaintance married for love, pure and 
simple and plenty of it. She expected too much. 
She took a very fair young man and spoiled him 
with flattery and free service, and exacted no cour- 
tesy, no respect, no delicate consideration, in return, 
— nothing but his protested love. The last time I 
saw her she was a faded, jaded creature, effervescing 


SEEDS OF time: 


sourly at the world, pinched by a paltry income, 
while her dear lord rode high and free, enjoying 
life in his own way, though doubtless loving her 
still. You see, love-matches are just as apt to 
turn out badly as any other kind.” 

I shall be afraid ever to marry anybody if you 
don’t quit saying such dreadful things,” exclaimed 
the brunette. 

“ That won’t hurt you,” said Rhoda sagely as 
she rose. And, laughing, she added, What a 
gallop I have been taking on one of my hobbies !” 

“ And you haven’t told us a word about your 
wedding-trip or what things you are going to 
have !” 

“ Oh, I am promised the foreign tour. As to 
my wardrobe, I shall have to do as well as I can : 
in my case, you know, there is no rich relation to 
insist on decorating the sacrifice. I rather like 
the situation : it would gall me to owe a trosseau 
to parties not responsible for me. When we arrive 
at Paris, I think I shall have been married long 
enough to warrant my accepting a dress or two 
from my husband if he insists. He is very gen- 
erous, and would load me with gorgeous presents 
now if I would allow it.” 

“I should allow it,” exclaimed Jennie. “You 
make me perfectly green with envy.” 

“ Me too,” chimed Louise as heartily. “ Oh, 
Rhoda, can’t you find each of us a nice old gen- 


CRAQUE-O'-DOOM. 


36 

tleman with that pretty fringe above his ears and 
plenty of money ?” 

“ This is what I will do, girls : when we come 
back and are settled down, Til have you to spend 
several months with me. It’s a very gay little 
city ; you can have germans and rides and parties 
to your hearts’ content.” 

Both girls clapped their hands lightly with 
quick enthusiasm. 

“ We must go to bed now,” declared Jennie. 
‘^It’s getting near the witching hour, and I am 
such a coward ! There isn’t a soul up in the house 
except ourselves.” 

They gathered up as many of their belongings 
as they had scattered about, and Jennie blew out 
all the candles except one, which she transferred 
to a china candlestick to light the way. In its 
rather feeble company, and encircled by an outer 
rim of darkness which it could not pierce, the girls 
tiptoed through the hall and up-stairs, seeing long 
distorted spectres of themselves stretching up the 
walls. 

When the noise of their closing doors came to 
Tamsin’s ears through the deep stillness, she 
slipped into the front parlor and stooped down 
before the remaining coals. Like an automaton 
she took the shovel and heaped ashes upon their 
trembling light. Fire has the color and the mo- 
tion of a living thing. Tamsin hung over it with 


SEEDS OF TIME. 


37 


a sensuous pleasure in its beauty. Every point 
where a violet flame reared suddenly from the red- 
hot bed received a benediction of ashes. Her 
hand forgot its mechanical business. “You 
needn’t think you are going to be slighted,” said 
Tamsin, talking to a little coal gazing reproach- 
fully at her through a hole in the ashes. “ Here’s 
a good lot for you, — enough to wrap yourself up in 
all night. Every feller will be served alike. Now, 
you’re winter wheat that’s sowed in the fall and 
comes up in the spring. The grain’s all buried 
deep; dirt’s over top of it. Folks couldn’t tell 
the’s so much seed kivvered here ready to sprout.’* 


* 


4 


38 


CRAQUE-a^DOOM, 


CHAPTER IV. 

PREPARATION. 

Two or three busy days passed rapidly by. 
The whole village of Barnet knew there was to be 
a party given in honor of the young-lady guests at 
the Hill-house. There could be no loftier pinnacle 
of festivity. Like every country town over fifty 
years old, Barnet had its solid people who formed 
its society, — people whose goods increased with 
every generation, who lived in time-tinted, hospit- 
able-looking homesteads, sent their sons to college, 
their daughters to seminaries, and loved to prove 
to all strangers that they were not a whit behind 
the age. In such mature villages you find, in- 
stead of the provincial manners you have a right 
to look for, a jealous conformity to what these vil- 
lages consider city life. But while the citizen is a 
free agent, with his own set, perhaps his club or 
several clubs, and his amusements, aside from the 
serious business of life, the villager is hampered 
by a heavy etiquette and a servile imitation of what 
he considers standard models. 

The Barnet girls were preparing for the party 
with delight ; the young gentlemen were also an- 


PREPARATION. 


39 

ticipating, according to their several temperaments, 
the pleasure or terror of a white-glove assembly in 
a community averse to dancing and card-playing. 
It is true that the very flower of Barnet society 
patronized the great yearly ball at the tavern 
which celebrated Washington’s birthday; but gen- 
erally sentiment was against such frivolity, and 
ministers about that time waxed very warm in de- 
nouncing the pleasures of sin which are for a 
season, and indulgent parents felt compunction 
that their pretty girls or spirited boys succeeded 
in gaining permission to partake of this exhilar- 
ating wickedness. 

Barnet was not intellectual, but it had long 
since discarded the plays and marching chants 
which belong to primitive society. At its fashion- 
able assemblies it stood up straight and conversed 
with miserable eflbrt, or promenaded, or listened 
W’ith hypocritical enjoyment to piano-playing. 

But very cheerful preparations were going for- 
ward at the dwelling which had been locally 
known as “ the Hill-house” ever since the Mills’s 
grandfather built it there to be away from the 
fumes of his distillery, which, half a mile distant, 
had discharged slops into the canal at its side and 
vast clouds of blackness from its monumental 
chimney into the sky. The silent distillery at this 
date leaned as if it meditated making a noise in 
the world yet by coming down with all its bulk 


40 


CRAQUE-a-DOOM. 


into the canal ; the street leading toward it, which 
in earlier days had creaked with loads of grain, 
was still called the “cinder-road,” and owed its 
hardness to ancient ashes from the distillery ; the 
chimney stood as inflexible as the shaft of Bunker 
Hill. But the Mills barely deigned to own it now, 
and perhaps felt no gratitude toward the venerable 
edifice for the fortune it had given them. 

Wax candles, multiplying themselves thousands 
of times in pendants and looking-glasses, shone all 
over the Hill-house. They were a light peculiar 
to that homestead, whose venerable mistress dis- 
liked modern lamps and the smell of oil. The 
Mills had always affbrded wax candles. Aunt 
Sally moulded dozens of them after the best recipe 
known to man, which could be found only in her 
recipe-book on the page with spring beer and 
mince-pies. The faces of her neighbors and neigh- 
bors’ children never appeared so pleasing as when 
swimming in the mild radiance which wax lights 
alone can shed. If the candles ran down or sput- 
tered — though hers seldom did — or pointed length- 
ening spires of wick knobbed with “ letters” for 
the young people to take off on their fingers, that 
was the nature of candles. One branch of Neal’s 
business on company-nights was to tiptoe around 
at least once with the silver snuffers and tray and 
snuff all the candles. 

A house prepared for guests seems to sit smiling 


PI^EFARA TION. 


41 

expectantly while it listens for the first arrival. 
The piano is Open ; doors or curtains are drawn 
back that parlors and library may meet hospit- 
ably together ; the dressing-rooms are warm and 
light; the fires are banks of burning color; the 
flowers are as fresh as the first girl in white who 
bends her neck to smell them. Our familiar haunts 
are not ours for the time; they belong to the 
genius of Hospitality, and we are merely its pur- 
veyors. 

Precisely at half-past seven o’clock Aunt Sally 
left her last order with Neal and turned toward her 
own room to put on the black brocade and lace 
bosom-piece which all Barnet honored. She was 
a most capable hostess, and her face shone in the 
glory of its white hair and benevolence. It was 
never a weariness to her to have guests in the 
house ; and guests were there constantly. Jennie 
Mills or any other cousin felt privileged to bring 
troops of friends at all times, and the captain had 
constant satellites, — old comrades, new and odd 
acquaintances, sporting gentlemen who came to 
hunt with him in the season. 

“ Tamsin,” said Aunt Sally, looking at the girl 
and remembering how rapidly and willingly she 
had worked, “ I should have let you run home to 
change your dress before it got dark. But Tillie 
is here ; you can take her for company.” 

Tamsin stood still, looking at the long and glit- 

4* 


42 


CRAQUE-a-DOOM, 


taring table in the dining-room. *^They won’t 
mind me,” she muttered. 

“ Remember not to stay long,” admonished Aunt 
Sally. 

Tamsin looked up in real anguish : ‘‘ Do I have 
to ?” 

Have to what, child ?” 

“ Put on something else.” 

Why, that dress is dirty.” 

‘‘I know’t,” fingering the threadbare cotton 
folds with a trembling touch and speaking in a 
whisper. “ I thought Pd git time to run home 
and wash and iron it ; but I didn’t.” Her fingers 
tightened and twitched the faded thing. 

“ Haven’t you any other dress ?” 

“ No, ’m,” fiercely, as if the confession were torn 
from her. 

** I wish I had known it,” said Aunt Sally, push- 
ing up her glasses. “ I wanted you to help pass 
the supper. Why, that’s too bad, Tamsin! You 
ought to have bought yourself a dress with the 
last money I paid you. Let me see : when was 
that?” 

Father wanted it,” Chenoworth’s daughter 
deigned to add, with her eyes on the floor. 

” Well, I’m sorry,” said the fair old lady kindly, 
and she went up-stairs with the benevolent inten- 
tion of speaking to one of the girls in behalf of 
her humble Cinderella. 


PREPARATION. 


Tamsin stood still, fingering the old dress, her 
olive face heated and her mouth curved down in 
scorn. “ It’s always going to be so, it’s always 
going to be so !” that strong spirit which ground 
her down mocked in her ear; upon which her own 
spirit defiantly retorted, “ It isn’t ! it shan’t.” 

Nobody would ever learn from her own lips that 
her father was in the habit of borrowing whatever 
she could earn and charging up her board and 
lodging to her as repayment. If the old man sus- 
pected himself of meanness, he silenced that sus- 
picion by pointing to the fact that he had a large 
family to support and somebody must support it. 
One or two small producers fare badly among half 
a dozen non-producers. 

“ I wanted to git Tillie a dress, daddy,” Tamsin 
had petitioned on the last occasion. 

“ Dresses is all vanity,” said the old man. 

And I’m nearly naked myself.” 

** Well, where’s corn-meal and side-meat to come 
from, and all the sugar that you eat up, if so much 
money has to be spent on clothes ?” 

Why don’t the boys work ? Why don’t you 
make ’em work at something ?” she cried fiercely ; 
at which the old man had growled helplessly and 
put her earnings in his pocket. 

. I might ’a lied and hid it,” whispered Tamsin, 
winking back a glare of tears which made the few 
lights in the dining-room each put a nimbus over 


44 


CRAQUE-O^-DOOM, 


its white length. “ Then me and Tillie needn’t be 
shamed as bad as we are. But somehow I never 
do: I always give it to him. And folks believe I 
don’t care how I look. Folks don’t know what 
you’re thinking about.” To keep folks from even 
suspecting, she changed the expression of her face 
the instant the kitchen-door opened, and looked to 
see Neal enter in his best black coat and air of 
politest superiority. “ I hate niggers !” she hissed 
under her breath. “They feel so smart when 
they’ve got plenty to eat and to wear and a nice 
house to live in.” 

But it was Tillie who came in and ran up to put 
her arms around her elder’s waist. Every curve 
in Tamsin’s face became maternal and tender. 
She smoothed the flaxen poll. “ I hain’t seen 
ye for so long,” said Tillie. 

“Did you miss me, honey?” 

“ Yes; I don’t like to git shut of ye.” 

“ What they doin’ down there ?” 

“ Nothin’. Sary Jane’s baby ain’t very well.” 

“You might ’a come up and stayed with me 
awhile yesterday.” 

“ I hate to Stan’ round in the way. When Aunt 
Sally Teagard’ saw me cornin’ in awhile ago, 
’peared like she’d think my room was better than 
my comp’ny.” 

Tamsin laughed and rocked the wide-mouthed 
little creature to and fro in her arms as they stood : 


PREPARATION, 


45 


“ ’Most anybody ’d think that of such rag-bags as 
you and me. Oh, honey, how I wish I was rich ! 
If I was, I’d give you everything heart could 
wish.” 

“ We’re poor,” said Tillie lightly, but with con- 
viction. “ We won’t never be rich.” 

“ Sometimes I b’lieve I willy' stated Tamsin with 
fierce energy. “ There’ll be some chance. I’d 
take you off, honey, to see everything in the world. 
You wouldn’t have to stick in the mud here. Fine 
dresses ! A ’cordion to play on !” 

“ Oh, Tam, would you git me a ’cordion ?” 

“ The finest kind of a one.” 

“I’d play it and knock the tunes while I’s 
a-playin’.” Tillie began to shuffle her feet and 
spread her hands with an imaginary accordion be- 
tween them. 

“And decenter shoes than you ever had on 
your feet yit,” added Tamsin savagely. “ What 
would you like to have the best of anything 
now ?” 

“ All the good cake I could eat, iced thick,” re- 
plied Tillie, gazing on the glittering table. 

Tamsin rocked her to and fro: “Oh! And 
we’ve got to go into my bedroom and stay hid.” 

“ What for?” 

“ Because I ain’t fit to be seen. You don-’t look 
so bad, but I do.” 

Tillie looked grave. Her guardian cast about 


CRAQUE-O'-DOOM. 


46 

mentally for cheerful entertainment with which to 
pass those hours that the guests would spend in 
gayety. 

“ And Mis’ Teagard’ needs me to help pass the 
supper, too ! But you can say all your hymns 
out of your little pink book to me settin’ there in 
the dark together.” 

Tillie assented dubiously and suggested as a . 
specimen, “ I thank the goodness and the grace.” 
She moreover plunged at once into the recitation, 
knocking the time with her head instead of her 
feet: “I’ve said ‘I thank the goodness and the 
grace’ more times ’n IVe got hairs in my head, 
Tamsin : 


“ I thank the goodness and the grace 
Which on my birth have smiled. 
And made me in this happy place 
A happy Christian child. 

“ I was not born, as thousands are, 
Where God is never known, 

And taught to pray a useless prayer 
To blocks of wood and stone. 


“ I was not born without a home, 

Or, in some broken shed, 

A gypsy baby, taught to roam 
And steal my daily bread.” 

You was born pretty nigh as bad off, though,” 
said Tamsin under her breath.) 


PREPARATION. 


47 


My God, I thank Thee, who hast planned 
A better lot for me. 

And placed me in this happy land, 

Where I can hear of Thee.” 

*‘Tamsin!” It was Miss Jones looking out 
from the parlor. She was in a loose cashmere 
dressing-gown, but her hair was elaborately fin- 
ished. “ Will you come up to my room — and 
bring your little sister if you want to — to help me 
a minute ?’* 


48 


CRAQUE-a-DOOM. 


CHAPTER V. 

AN ARRIVAL. 

This was Rhoda Jones’s device for playing a 
brief part as godmother. Aunt Sally had gone to 
the girls to have her lace bosom-piece set straight 
and mention Tamsin’s predicament. “ If I had 
known it in time,” she said with a sympathetic 
twist of her mouth, “ I could have provided some- 
thing for her to put on. There are several good 
calicoes of mine she could have, but they would 
need a considerable amount of taking in.” 

“ Haven’t I got something ?” cried Jennie Mills 
through a mouthful of dangerous pins and a 
checked laugh as she manipulated the lace on the 
old lady’s noble shoulders. 

‘‘You leave it to me,” called Rhoda from across 
the hall. “ Your girl down-stairs, Mrs. Teagarden, 
is one of the royal personages in disguise who are 
sensitive to all approach. She will have to be sur- 
prised into raiment not her own, or she will not 
put it on.” ^ 

“ Tamsin is a good, quiet girl,” said Aunt Sally ; 
“ but you don’t know the Chenoworths.” 

“ She is the revolt of the Chenoworths,” ex- 


AN ARRIVAL. 


49 

pounded Rhoda, appearing at the door. I 
haven’t had my eyes on her nearly a week for 
nothing.” 

You have such queer ideas, Rhoda!” laughed 
Louise, looking back from her dressing-glass, in 
which a glorious blond head was being con- 
structed. Give Rhoda a stump and an old woman 
with a blackberry basket, with a little patch of sky 
overhead and a bit of woods at the back, and she’ll 
get a story out of it, when I couldn’t put it into a 
decent pencil-sketch. — Oh, where is that powder- 
puff?” 

“ That’s because you draw so abominably,” ex- 
claimed Jennie. 

“ I’ll draw a ribbon out of my box for Tamsin, 
at any rate. Here’s one.”* 

“ Gracious ! she can’t dress herself in one ribbon. 
— I might give her my black cashmere. Aunt Sally. 
She’s larger than Louise, but she’s about my 
height.” 

“Janet,” said Aunt Sally, “don’t say another 
word about it. Your black cashmere is nearly 
new, and your father and mother would have a 
fine opinion of me if I encouraged you in such ex- 
travagant generosity.” 

“ But you will need her.” 

“ I think I can manage with Neal. And the 
young gentlemen are always very forward to 
assist.” 
c d 


5 


50 


CRAQUE-O'-DOOM. 


“ There goes Rhoda down-stairs,” said Louise, 
setting a knot of ribbon in her hair where it would 
do most damage to beholders. 

And very shortly Rhoda returned up the back 
stairway with two other pairs of feet following her. 
She shut her door, murmuring, This must be a 
close seance. Other mediums — even the most 
noble — might spoil the communication.” 

Tamsin waited, erect and folding her arms, with- 
out betraying that she tingled in her raiment be- 
side this wealthier poor girl’s fine half-toilet. Tillie 
sat down on a cane-chair by the corner of the 
open fire and curled her rough-shod feet out of 
sight. 

“ The others are over there together,” said Miss 
Jones, unfastening her wrapper, “ having no end 
of fun while they dress. So I thought of you, 
Tamsin, and wondered if you would sew that 
white frill under the edge of my velvet train for 
me. There are needle and thread and thimble. 
Just baste it, — pretty strongly, though : I haven’t 
any doubt some masculine hoof will be set through 
it. The girls are going to look like angels. Have 
you seen their dresses ?” 

“ No,” replied Tamsin, bending her head over 
the sewing. 

“ I keep pretty steadily to black and rich, heavy 
things. They are less expensive in the long run. 
Louise is going to be a fluff of lavender-color with 


AN ARRIVAL, 


51 

a fashionable name, further neutralized by lots of 
lace. Jennie is going to be a blaze in the land- 
scape : she has a scarlet satin that makes her look 
like a dream of Egypt.” 

Tamsin actually felt no sting in these things, 
told to her as to any young girl. She glanced up 
at Rhoda Jones, and half smiled with interest. 

Rhoda paused in the occupation of pencilling 
her eyebrows to laugh back. “ They were always 
so pale,” she explained. “ Not black and straight, 
like yours.” 

Tamsin brushed the back of her hand across 
one eyebrow with a hasty gesture. She rose up 
with her little task completed. 

“ Ever so many thanks. Now I wish you’d put 
on this black skirt and red basque and little red 
cap, will you. I have a great fancy to see how 
you’d look in them.” 

She brought the garments out of a wardrobe. 

I The skirt was cashmere ; the jacket and tasselled 
cap were velveteen. They were full of sandal- 
wood odor. 

“ Now, don’t refuse,” begged Rhoda. “ I don’t 
mind telling you I made these things over for you 
myself since I first saw you.” 

“ Made ’em for me ?” 

“ Yes ; you’re picturesque, and they’ll make you 
look more so. You can afford to put on odd 
things : all girls of your style can. The cap and 


CRAQUE-O^-nOOAf. 


52 

jacket I had for some private theatricals, I be- 
lieve they will fit you to a dot.” 

“ Oh, dress up in them, Tamsie !” put in Tillie. 

‘‘Do!” said Rhoda, turning from her dressing 
to extend her large beautiful arms in argument. 
“Why shouldn’t you make yourself fair to look 
upon, as well as any other girl ? And those 
things are yours ; I fixed them for you.” 

Tamsin took up one piece after the other. Tillie 
came to look around her elbow. 

“ And you’d better hurry, my dear,” said Rhoda. 
“ Oh, I nearly forgot : here are a pair of low shoes 
and scarlet stockings which go with that dress.” 

“ I’m very much obleeged.” Tamsin spoke the 
words slowly, as if she were struggling against the 
gifts. 

“ Not a bit. I’m obliged to you for helping 
me. 

“ I don’t see how you come to fix ’em — for 
me ?” with a slight upward inflection of her 
voice. 

Rhoda came forward laughing, but as if she did 
not observe the hesitation and trembling of this 
chrysalis woman. To Tamsin her manner seemed 
completely charming. It was neither too reserved 
nor too familiar. It conferred kindness as a matter 
of course, and started an exhilaration like joy 
through veins accustomed to torpor. 

Without a word of warning Rhoda powdered 


AN ARRIVAL. 


53 

the flaxen hair and olive face, and Tamsin sub- 
mitted, laughing with her. 

About ten minutes thereafter there was the noise 
of a vehicle in front of the house, and in due sea- 
son the door-bell rang. 

‘‘Now, there are the Balls,” exclaimed Aunt 
Sally, bustling out of the chamber where Louise 
and Jennie had impressed her willing hands in 
their service : “ they always drive in early. I 
wonder if Tom is down-stairs ? Make haste, 
girls, and tell Miss Rhoda to hurry down.” She 
looked over the stairway. “ Where’s Neal ? Why 
doesn’t he answer the door?” 

“ I’ll answer it,” said a figure hurrying forward 
from the back stairs. “ Shall I ?” 

“ Why, Tamsin Chenoworth !” exclaimed Aunt 
Sally, bringing her glasses to bear. “ Who on 
earth did fix you up in that kind of a way ?” 

“ Don’t I look right ?” 

“Why, yes, you do. You look real well, con- 
sidering,” said Aunt Sally with discretion. She 
followed the figure down-stairs with her eyes be- 
fore turning to descend by the back way. 

The bell rang again. Tamsin opened the door 
wide and looked out at night. The hall-lights 
were behind her. She saw nobody, and heard 
only the soughing of the wind in the evergreens. 

Suddenly, it seemed at her feet, a voice spoke, 
and she saw a man’s head on the top step as if it 
5 * 


CRAQUE-a-DOOM. 


54 

had just emerged from the shadow where the bell- 
handle was. There seemed to be a very little ex- 
cepting the head, and it was all muffled up. But 
the face was raised to this picture of a black-eyed, 
light-haired girl in scarlet and black and black- 
lace frills, slim in figure, beautifully oval in face. 

Tamsin looked down at the head without utter- 
ing a sound. She was terrified, but with instinctive 
compassion betrayed no terror. 

“ This is Captain Mills’s residence ?” The head’s 
voice was pleasing and mellow rather than heavy 
and masculine. 

Yes, sir.” 

“ Is he at home ?” 

** Yes, sir. Will you come in ?” 

He did not see the pallor around her mouth as 
he grasped the side of the door and swung him- 
self up into the hall. Whatever his length of 
limb may have been, it was concealed by a tiny 
ulster. The top of his head was not on a level 
with Tamsin’s waist when he pulled his cap off. 
He drew a card from some inner pocket and 
handed it up to Tamsin. It bore the name of 
“ Isaac Sutton.” She closed the door, and was 
directing him toward the open parlor, when Cap- 
tain Mills came into the hall, exclaiming, “ Why, 
Craque-o’-Doom, how are you ? Come in, old fel- 
low, come in !” 


“ IS^r T HE HORRIBLE r * 


55 


CHAPTER VI. 

'Hsn’t he horrible?” 

It looked very grotesque to see Captain Mills 
and the mite to whom he was obliged to stoop, 
shaking hands. They went into the front parlor. 

I made use of your general invitation to drop 
down on you for what they call the holidays,” said 
the mellow voice near the floor. “ I wanted to get 
away from the people, and from the hubbub they 
make at this time of the year.” 

Captain Mills seemed to feel his height an en- 
cumbrance as he pushed a chair near the hearth. 
But he took another himself, and this brought his 
head nearer to a level with that of his visitor, who 
climbed dexterously into place and stuck a pair of 
small shoe-soles toward the fire. 

“ Well, I’m glad you’re here,” said Captain Tom 
heartily. “But I’m afraid you’ve dropped down 
right upon a hubbub. There’s going to be a party 
in the house to-night.” 

“ A party ?” The tone expressed unmistakable 
disgust. 

“ Yes. Given for some young ladies, — a cousin 
of mine and her friends.” 


CJ?A Q UE- O' -DO OM. 


56 

''Young ladies?” Distress was added to the 
disgust. " Come, Tom, I must get out of this. I 
don’t see how I got the idea that you lived like a 
Crusoe because you were a bachelor, but that seems 
to be the impression I labored under.” 

"You shall not stir a step,” exclaimed Captain 
Mills, putting his hand on the figure. "A few 
neighbors shan’t frighten a man’s choice spirits 
out of his house. If you don’t want to partake of 
the festivities — ” 

" Your pardon, Tom. Look at me !” 

Captain Mills did so almost affectionately, and 
without removing his hand. 

“ If you don’t want to be tormented with people,” 
he continued, " you can adjourn to your room, and 
as soon as I can disappear we will hold a session 
of our own with closed doors.” 

"That will do very well. There are the young 
ladies though,” reflectively. " I wish — I always 
wish — I had Gyges’s ring.” 

" Pooh ! Three first-rate, comfortable girls. And 
here’s my aunt, Mrs. Teagarden. Allow me. — My 
friend Mr. Sutton, Aunt Sally.” 

Captain Mills half arose; the dwarf bent his 
large head with beautiful deference. Aunt Sally 
made the old-time courtesy and came forward to 
receive Thomas’s friend. Her mouth twitched 
spasmodically as she brought her glasses to bear 
upon him, but she was charming, and took his 


ISN^ T HE HORRIBLE r 


hand, giving it a stately shake : “ We are very glad 
to see you, Mr. Sutton. I have heard Thomas 
speak about you. Did you find it cold driving 
from the railroad ?” 

“That reminds me,” interrupted the captain: 
“ have you got your own rig with you ?” 

“Yes; I usually take it,” replied the other half 
dejectedly. — “ It’s my trap,” he explained to Aunt 
Sally. “ I ship the whole thing when I travel, be- 
cause there is less risk about it than in trusting 
myself to chance.” 

“ Your trap ?” said Aunt Sally. “ Yes, Thomas 
sometimes hunts, but he uses guns ; though the 
very sight of a musket makes me feel sad since the 
war.” 

A smile appeared on the strange face, now 
flushed with fire-heat: “I mean my carriage. It 
is a snug one, built on purpose for me, and with it 
I bring a horse and a coachman.” 

“ Neal will show them the way to the stable,” 
said Captain Mills. 

“ They have gone to your hotel. I saw by the 
light that you were at home : so I gave my man 
directions before coming in.” 

“ Where is Neal, aunt ? He must go after them. 
— Lots of empty stalls here, Craque-o’-Doom, and 
room in the carriage-house. It wasn’t kind of you 
to doubt it.” 

“ Well, when a man has to carry his house on 


CRAQUE-O^-DOOM. 


58 

his back, he ought to hesitate about encumbering 
his friends with it. My valises were put inside the 
gate.” 

Here is Neal,” exclaimed Aunt Sally, per- 
ceiving him in the vista. — “ Neal !” She moved 
toward him with a crackle and swish of the rich 
brocade. “ Go out and bring the valises that were 
left by the gate, and then you must hurry down to 
the tavern and tell this gentleman’s man that he is 
to put up here with the horse and buggy. Tamsin 
can mind the door until you get back.” 

** And, aunt,” called Captain Mills, as Neal’s un- 
willing feet wejit through the hall, “ let us have a 
room right away.” He rose, for Neal’s exit was 
forestalled by a ring at the door-bell, the first 
arrival. 

The dwarf got down from his seat and sauntered 
behind a large chair, while the people who entered 
were ushered to dressing-rooms. 

Aunt Sally then led the way up the cleared 
stairs, while Captain Mills stayed below to receive 
the guests. She was flurried, and conscious of a 
spider-like creature climbing rapidly behind her, 
and positive she could not have borne to see him 
climb ahead of her ; so she did not see a beautiful 
dark head stretching out above to peep down, or a 
timorous blond one appearing behind that. 

“Isn’t he horrible ?” whispered Jennie. 

“ Oh ! oh !” whispered Louise. 


** ISN’T HE HORRIBLE?” 


59 

In turning a bend of the stairs, the dwarf gave 
them a swift look. His face, seen dimly, expressed 
neither pain nor resentment. He was accustomed 
to such words. 

Rhoda Jones’s hand, put out of her room, pulled 
them both into it. 

Oh, I hope he didn’t hear me !” exclaimed 
Jennie when the door was shut ; “ but he makes 
my flesh creep.” 

Of course he heard you,” said Rhoda. And 
what a mass of nerves and anguish such a creature 
must be !” 

“ Well, I can’t help it. I never saw anything so 
horrible in my life I” 


6o 


CRAQUE-O-’DOOM. 


CHAPTER VII. 

A NABOB. 

Within an hour the latest guests had arrived, 
and the three girls were in various parts of the 
buzzing parlors, making themselves agreeable to 
the flower of Barnet society. Louise promenaded 
on the arm of an elderly gentleman, while half the 
matrons dissected her dress; Jennie had drawn 
around herself a court of airy young ladies and ad- 
miring young gentlemen ; and Rhoda Jones was 
trying to make life less excruciating to a youth of 
twenty, with a large Adam’s apple and a blushing 
countenance, who had the reputation in Barnet of 
being “ smart.” 

Everybody talked with strained gayety, — as poor 
human nature, gentle as well as simple, always will 
do on festive occasions, — excepting some quiet 
women who got behind tables and buried them- 
selves in photograph-albums or stereoscopic views 
until they were marshalled out by Aunt Sally and 
catechised about the health of all their distant 
relatives and the best method of making black- 
berry-balsam. 

There were two or three young girls who would 


A NABOB. 


6l 


evermore remember this event as their first party, 
and who hung protectingly to each other, tittering 
and squeezing each other’s fingers at unspoken 
jokes and mutual understandings. They were 
afraid to cross the room without their arms inter- 
laced, and were so desperately anxious to behave 
correctly that they stumbled and overturned things 
with their elbows, and very much desired to take 
off their hands and feet and float. The ‘‘ town 
girls” were constantly watched by them. They 
admired Louise and Jennie with all their souls, but 
Rhoda Jones, so approachable that she considered 
herself quite Bohemian, was an awful mystery to 
them. They told each other in thrilling whispers 
that she “ wrote,” and they both envied and ridi- 
culed the temerity of the young man with the 
Adam’s apple, who stood up grasping the lapels of 
his coat and talked his intelligent talk to her. If 
she looked toward them, they were desperately 
afraid she saw something about them to impale and 
hold up before the public. They promenaded the 
halls, and were after a while overwhelmed to find 
themselves on the arms of their elder sisters’ cava- 
liers, who took them up in a patronizing, paternal 
way wholly delightful. When Tamsin Chenoworth 
was helping to pass refreshments, these young 
girls, her contemporaries, pitied her because she 
could not sit on the stairs with an elderly beau to 
fan her and hold her plate, — or they would have 
6 


62 CRAQUE-O^-DOOM. 

pitied her if they had considered her worth the 
trouble. 

Before supper was served, however, Captain 
Mills made his way slowly, past groups with whom 
he stopped to chat, to Rhoda, and offered her his 
arm, saying, “ I’d like to consult with you a 
minute, if you can excuse yourself.” 

“ About what ?” she inquired, moving away 
with him. 

“ I hope I didn’t break in on anything very in- 
teresting?” 

“ Why, yes, you did. You took me away from 
an altar where clouds of incense have been rising 
to my delighted nose. Don’t you call it interesting 
to be gazed upon as a goddess, when you know 
that hard work and plenty of it is the law of your 
life.” 

“ Very interesting,” laughed the captain. “ You’re 
quite a lion down here, you know.” 

And what a comfort that is, when I consider 
that I am a mere lamb in Park Row and Madison 
Square ! The gentleman from whom you took 
me was discoursing the sweetest flattery, without a 
suspicion that I have had a book published for 
which I never got a cent of royalty.” They both 
laughed as they entered the dining-room. 

Tillie Chenoworth was sitting there, with her 
feet curled under her, by the fire, listening to the 
buzz of society. Tamsin stood beside her, with 


A NABOB. ( 5 ^ 

one hand on her shoulder. They were quite at 
the other end of the room. 

“ What has been done to that girl ?” said Cap- 
tain Tom, looking at her shapely back, as he 
paused beside the table. 

Oh, she has merely put on a bright kerchief 
and washed her face, as Fanchon did,” said Rhoda. 

Men will always notice a woman’s new gear 
either in effect or detail. Did you ever feel in- 
terest enough in that girl to draw her out and see 
whether she has a thinking, sensitive nature?” 

“ Well, I don’t know,” returned Captain Tom 
drolly. They were speaking in a low tone, so that 
their voices reached Tamsin as a heavy murmur. 
“ Your speaking of Fanchon reminds me that I 
gave her that book to read once, — the English ver- 
sion of it. She was dusting the books and look- 
ing into them. I picked up ‘ The Cricket,’ and 
said I, ' Here, Tamsin, here’s something you will 
like. It’s about a smart little girl who made a 
woman of herself.’ She took the book, and I went 
on elaborating: Mt’s been made into a play and 
put on the stage, and it’s quite popular. People 
like to see a poor girl come out at the top of the 
heap.’ ” 

“ And what did she say ?” inquired Rhoda, smil- 
ing slowly. 

Well, she read it when she got time, and when 
I thought of it I asked her how she liked it. The 


CRAQUE-a-DOOM. 


64 

girl has brilliant eyes, you know. She looked 
down and answered, ‘ Very well then she looked 
up with a sort of flash, and said, ‘ I don’t think that 
Cricket had much spunk, or she wouldn’t let ’em 
see when she felt bad.” 

Rhoda nodded her head several times. The 
scarlet bodice stood in relief against the black 
mantel. Tillie stirred restlessly, and said in an 
undertone, feeling for the hand on her shoulder, 
“ Tamsie, when we goin’ to have some cake ?” 

“ Soon’s they have supper.” 

“ Will you gimme a piece of that one all over 
flowers ?” the wide mouth showing its pink gums. 

Yes, honey, if Mis’ Teagard’ lets me.” 

“ They’re goin’ to begin now, ain’t they ?” 

“ Not till about ’leven.” 

“ But them ones is goin’ to begin.” 

Tamsin looked over her shoulder at the host 
and his companion. 

“ I brought you on purpose,” said Captain Tom 
to Rhoda, ” to have a tray of something he would 
like fixed up for him. I thought you’d be the 
most likely person to hit off his fancy.” 

“ Much obliged for the compliment. Do you 
know what he ordinarily prefers ?” 

“ No, I don’t think I do. Somehow, I can’t re- 
call him eating. But he’s a hearty fellow, too. 
He was up on the Canadian rivers last summer 
with several of us.” 


A NABOB. 


65 


“ What ! that little creature ?” 

“ Yes,” said Tom. “ I suppose I got used to his 
being little. He is as swift and active as a bird.” 

“ The girls were peeping at him when he went 
up-stairs.” As she talked, Rhoda selected a bit 
here and a bit there and covered one of the ready- 
salvers. “Jennie said he was horrible.” 

“ Craque-o’-Doom isn’t horrible : I don’t find 
him so. He seemed queer at first. But men 
aren’t so particular as women. The camping- 
party I met him with all voted him first-class.” 

“ Craque-o’-Doom ! That isn’t his name ?” 

“ His name’s Sutton. I don’t know how he got 
the other, but that’s what he’s called. I do hope 
you’ll be good to him while he’s here : he’ll be apt 
to take to you. And he’s a rare gentleman : 
there’s something delicate and fine about his na- 
ture. It is like a woman’s ; and yet, deformed as 
he is, I never thought him effeminate.” 

“ I am anxious to meet him : I always like new 
experiences and unusual people. Won’t he be 
visible this evening at all ?” 

“ Yes, indeed,” exclaimed Tom. “ Come up- 
stairs now. He and I have been having a good 
talk ever since I got away from the crowd.” 

“ So I will. Tamsin, is the coffee made?” 

Tamsin came up the room to Rhoda and paused 
beside the tray. “ I don’t think it is yit,” she 
replied. “ Do you want it right away ?” 

^ 6 * 


66 


^ CRAQUE-a-DOOM. 

“ We’re going to carry some supper to the gen- 
tleman up-stairs. Yes, he will want coffee, of 
course. — Captain Tom, have you got a little pre- 
serv^ed ginger? This tray looks rather tempting. 
We’ll take it ourselves.” 

“ Of course we will,” said Tom : “ Craque-o’- 
Doom will appreciate that. Ginger-root ? Yes, 
— Tamsin, isn’t there a pot or two of preserved 
ginger in any of the closets ? Aunt Sally would 
know.” 

” I know what you want,” said Tamsin, stop- 
ping on her way to the kitchen : “ as soon as I 
tell Ann Maria you want the *coffee made, I’ll 
get it.” 

Rhoda looked after her approvingly : That girl 
has great adaptability. She has improved within 
two or three days. Do you know I’m interested 
in her ? She silently attracts me.” 

“Does she?” said Tom, smiling. “She’s an 
odd creature. Aunt Sally’s had her about the 
house a great deal, and I’ve tried to encourage 
her, but I never could make her out.” 

“ She’ll surprise you some time if the sun ever 
shines upon her. That girl’s frozen by her circum- 
stances. She feels nothing but the pinch, and 
thinks nothing but rebellion. Let her be thawed 
and fostered, and she will reveal herself in a way 
you will be far from despising.” 

“ I hope I’m far from despising any woman.” 


A NABOB. 


67 

Rhoda looked up with an admiring expression : 
“ You’re such a man as women cannot help ap- 
proving of. Certainly you are far from despising 
any woman. You’re a universal Wing over them ! 
We’re waiting for that ginger, aren’t we ? I won- 
der if your friend likes it ?” 

“ He probably does. In his camp-stores he had 
all manner of odd foreign stuff He has queer 
tastes, and gratifies them to the utmost.” 

“ He must be a nabob. — This is it. Thanks.’" 
Rhoda received the ginger-pot from Tamsin’s 
hand. Tamsin hesitated for further directions on 
the edge of the conference. 

“ He ?” replied Tom. “ Craque-o’-Doom is 
worth his hundred thousands. He has a lovely 
place down at Swampscott, they told me, — sum- 
mer-place, — and a rich old den up the North River. 
He’s rich as a lord, and it’s a good thing for him.” 

” Of course it is.” 

“ He has bonds and stocks, and I don’t know 
what all. His family was a first-rate one, too, 
but I believe they are all dead except himself 
He’s desperately fond of music. / think h-e’s a 
sort of a genius. Oh, you’ll find him out by 
degrees. I don’t know how he gets on with 
ladies : he doesn’t like to show himself But I 
have seen him endure staring and remarks in 
perfect silence.” 

“Take the salver now,” said Rhoda, “and we 


68 


CRAQUE-O'-DOOM. 


will go up the back stairway. — Tamsin, as soon as 
the coffee is done, bring a hot cup of it, with cream 
and sugar, on another salver, please.” 


CHAPTER VIII.* 

*‘WHY don’t you shudder?” 

After the captain and Miss Rhoda had gone 
up-stairs, Tamsin stood beside her sister, looking 
into the fire. Tillie’s face was scorched by the 
pleasant heat. She leaned sleepily on the back 
of her chair, untroubled by her elder’s train of 
thought. 

Tamsin lifted one of the claw-like fists from her 
sister’s lap and looked at it. 

“ They’re clean,” pleaded Tillie thickly. 

“ I know it,” said Tamsin. Her palm wandered 
over the sharp protuberances of Tillie’s little 
shoulder-blades. “You’re made straight, ain’t 
you ?” 

“ Yes,” replied Tillie. “ So’re you.” 

“ Do I look tall? Do I look like other folks?” 

“ Yes, and you look pretty,” added Tillie. 

“ Did you see the little man that Mis’ Teagarden 
took up-stairs ?” 


“ WBY DON’T YOU SHUDDER?” 


69 

^‘Uh-huh!” grunted Tillie affirmatively. “I 
was in the hall, lookin’ for you to come back. It 
scar’t me so I run to your room and jumped under 
the bed.” 

“ Did he look ugly ?” 

“ Oh, he looked orful ! He walked along this 
way.” The supple child dropped from her chair, 
doubled herself up, and danced across the floor 
with her legs half abbreviated. Tamsin watched 
her without comment. The effort was exhaust- 
ing: so Tillie returned in the natural manner to 
her chair. 

“ Would you like me,” said Tamsin, if I was 
that way ?” 

“ No,” returned the little one with frank deci- 
sion ; “ I’d run from ye like a white-head. Every- 
body would.” 

“ But if I had lots of money and could give 
you everything you wanted, and was that way, 
wouldn’t you like me at all ?” 

“ No ; that wouldn’t make no difference,” ex- 
plained Tillie. “ I’d run from ye all the same.” 

Tamsin’s eyes filled with anguish. She stooped 
over her sister and looked into the light, laughing 
eyes. 

Tillie gave her a bony little hug : You ain’t all 
hunched up, Tammie.” 

“ But I might ’a been !” 

Tillie drew her lips together over her gums, 


CRAQUE-O’-DOOM. 


70 

and was settling against Tamsin to meditate com- 
fortably on such a possibility, when the elder put 
her by ; “ I must take that coffee up-stairs.” She 
put the necessary things on a salver, went into 
the kitchen, and returned past Tillie with fragrant 
steam issuing from a cup of Dresden china. She 
had daringly taken one of Aunt Sally’s treasures 
for the service of the dwarf If that heavy Dres- 
den cup and saucer got broken, Tamsin Cheno- 
worth dared not think of the consequences. 

“ I thought it over,” announced Tillie. If 
’twas j/ou, Tam, I don’t b’lieve I’d run from ye. 
But” — Tillie shook her forefinger impressively — 
“ I don’t want to see that chap up-stairs no more'* 

The captain and Rhoda had been hurriedly de- 
manded down-stairs. When Tamsin turned the 
knob of the chamber-door after knocking, she was 
surprised to find only the occupant. He sat com- 
fortably before the fire, buried in an easy-chair, a 
table at his side holding the salver Tom had 
brought. The room, like all the other rooms in 
house, was spacious and high, yet he, a mote of 
humanity, remained its principal point. A Persian 
rug worn silky smooth trailed across his lap, con- 
cealing the lower part of his body : it was a con- 
stant habit of his to drape himself thus. His 
blond head had a square massive look, and his 
neck was strong and cleanly smooth as tinted 
ivory. 







I 




PVBY DON^T YOU SHUDDER r 


n 

Tamsin saw his entire face for the first time. It 
was not weazen and shrunken, but ample, deli- 
cately featured, with a luminous expression. He 
wore a close-trimmed moustache ; the head tilted 
back against the stuffed chair had an actual manly 
beauty of its own, which was multiplied when he 
turned his glance toward the girl. His eyes were 
very gray, with a velvet quality hard to describe. 
They were large and set wide apart under brows 
so full of expression that their slightest motion 
changed the whole face. He looked at Tamsin, 
and she paused inside the door with the coffee- 
tray. 

Their steady gazing on each other was first re- 
alized by the dwarf. He smiled, parting his lips 
over teeth as fine and clear as polished shells. 

Well ?” said he with an interrogative accent. 

Tamsin approached and set down his coffee, re- 
arranging the other salver afterward, so that every- 
thing was within his reach. Having done so, she 
again met his eyes, resting one hand on the table 
and placing the other behind her. Her whole ap- 
pearance was innocent and fascinating. She felt 
herself in an atmosphere which gave her peculiar 
ease, as if she had mental lungs inhaling and ex- 
haling an air full of scents and hints and influences 
of some higher world. The same feeling had 
struck her on early summer mornings when a 
branch of wild roses shook dew in her face, or on 


CRAQUE-a-DOOM. 


72 

winter evenings when the sun left a warm red bar 
above snow-fields and skeleton woods. Of this sen- 
sation Tamsin would probably never speak to any 
other palpitating soul. It was her glimpse of im- 
mortality, her recognition of the fact, “ I have lived 
heretofore in other conditions than this, and I shall 
live again in glory now unknown to me.” Her 
face had no self-consciousness : she was for the 
time without personality. 

The deformed man said suddenly, the words 
sounding strange to his own ears and as if spoken 
by some one else, ” You don’t shudder at sight of 
me. I believe most women do ; but you do not. 
Why don’t you ?” 

I don’t see no reason to,” said Tamsin slowly, 
as if weighing her convictions. Taking her hand 
from the table, she turned and went out of the 
room, but put back her head to inquire, “ Is there 
anything else, sir?” 

“ No, thank you. This is abundance, — more 
than I could have asked.” 


rf 


THE FLIGHT OF A WHITE-HEAD. 


73 


CHAPTER IX. 

THE FLIGHT OF A WHITE-HEAD. 

Before the young ladies came down to their 
late breakfast next morning the captain and his 
friend had breakfasted and started for a short 
drive in the latter’s carriage. This snug vehicle 
was of the coupe pattern, with steps particularly 
adapted to a gentleman whose legs were only a 
couple of spans long. The padded interior had a 
smell of wild flowers. 

“ Drive us up the pike,’^ said Tom to the stolid 
coachman. — “ On the ridge you can get a good 
view of our village, Craque-o’-Doom. It isn’t 
what it once was. The bisection of the National 
Road and Ohio Canal made this place, and the in- 
crease of railway-traffic everywhere else killed it. 
We have warehouses, flour-mills, and distilleries 
standing empty and idle. That pile yonder be- 
longs to our family. My father let the business 
die out, and I don’t think that I should ever care 
to revive it, if circumstances were ever so favor- 
able.’^ 

“ What occupation do you claim for yourself?” 
said Craque-o’-Doom, lowering the window to get 
at the pleasant winter air. 

D 7 


74 


CJ?A Q UE- a-D 0 OM. 


“ Well, I’m that lazy dog a gentleman farmer. 
When I came home from college I was full of 
enthusiasm about law. I began to read ; but 
about that time the war broke out, and after my 
four years’ service I found the old estate running 
to seed, and settled down to improve it. In va- 
rious ways I’ve been improving it ever since, — 
experiments here and fertilizers there, study of 
crops and soils, and all that coquetting with labor 
which the out-and-out farmer despises. If I had 
nothing, I should be considered half a loafer ; but, 
as I’m tolerably well-to-do, my neighbors think 
I can afford to loiter.” 

They heard the spat of boot-soles on the flinty 
pike behind them, for that hard-grained thorough- 
fare clove through snow when all the by-roads 
were covered. 

'‘If I had been allowed to choose a career,” said 
tlie dwarf, “ I should have chosen something that 
would bring oratory into play. I can’t imagine 
anything greater than standing before an assembly 
and shaping its opinions.” 

The spat of boot-soles now overtook the car- 
riage, and a crew of five or six small boys ran 
along on each side of it. “ That’s him !” panted 
one. “ Here he is, on this side ! He aint no big- 
ger’n a baby !” 

“ see,” struggled another, with curiosity 

as callous as if the dwarf had been beyond sight 


THE FLIGHT OF A WHITE-HEAD. 


75 

and hearing. “ He’s got arms, ’cause I see his 
hand. What show does he travel with ?” 

Look out !” panted the others in warning to 
this bold youth, who seemed about to climb upon 
the step : “ he might shy somethin’ at ye. Them 
kind is bad when they get their tempers up.” 

Craque-o’-Doom laughed, but Tom, in high dis- 
pleasure, opened the window beside him. “ Boys,” 
cried he severely, get away from this carriage, or 
ril have you all locked in the calaboose. I’ll take 
down the names of every one of you. Don’t you 
know any better than to annoy a gentleman in this 
way ?” 

They fell back, somewhat abashed, but one said, 
Then you orter take down Billy Mac’s name too. 
He’s up behind, peepin’ through the curtain.” 

Captain Mills struck back at the curtain, but at 
the same instant heard a thud of some one drop- 
ping on the pike. The little scoundrels !” he 
exclaimed. 

“ Don’ll mind it,” said Craque-o’-Doom. ** I 
have had time enough to grow accustomed to my 
notoriety.” 

Captain Mills put his head out of the window 
and directed the driver to turn into a by-street: 

They will find it isn’t so easy to follow us along 
the soft roads.” He looked back, and saw the 
boys reluctantly giving up their chase. They 
seemed aggrieved and disconcerted, and from 


CRAQUE-a-DOOM. 


76 

among them came a well-aimed snow-ball, out 
of the arc of whose descent Captain Tom dodged 
into the carriage. 

The winter landscape looked desolate. They 
crossed from one street to another. Detached 
from other houses and standing among the skele- 
tons of last year’s cornstalks was one house which 
Craque-o’-Doom pointed out as embodying his idea 
of all that was dismal. “ Though, with appropriate 
hollyhocks and sunflowers and climbing plants, it 
might look better in summer,” said he. But 
the sodden door-yard and bleak background are 
enough to give a mere passer the blue devils. 
How do people support life in such places, I 
, wonder ?” 

“ Oh, that place !” replied Captain Mills. “ That’s 
where Tamsin lives, — Tamsin Chenoworth, the girl 
my aunt has with her up at our house.” 

“ She opened the door when I arrived ?” 

“ Maybe she did.” 

“ And brought up my coffee last evening ?” 

“ Yes.” 

'*So she lives there? Your aunt has her en- 
gaged as a servant ?” 

“Well, no. We are afraid of that word around 
here, Craque-o’-Doom. I can call my black man 
my servant, but we have to be careful how we 
apply the term to whites in a rural community.” 

“ Domestic, then ?” 


THE FLIGHT OF A WHITE-HEAD. 


77 

“Not exactly. Aunt Sally has her about the 
house frequently, and takes some interest in her. 
She belongs to a miserable family, and seems to 
have rather more to her than the rest of them. 
Miss Jones has taken a fancy to her, too.” 

They had passed the house, when they saw an 
old man picking his way along fence-corners, car- 
rying a chair on his shoulder. He looked up with 
a dull eye. 

“ How d’ do, Mr. Chenoworth ?” saluted Captain 
Mills good-naturedly. “ That’s the girl’s father,” 
he explained to Craque-o’-DOom. “ The old fel- 
low mends chairs, when he can get them to mend. 
He has a prodigious family, and a family connec- 
tion that ramifies through our lowest population. 
When I was younger I used to have romantic ideas 
about digging up and fertilizing this lower stratum, 
but I’ve come to the conclusion that the best thing 
you can do with such people is to let them alone.” 

“ Entirely ?” 

“ No. I throw jobs in their way when I have 
any, but I don’t intrude my advice or expect them 
to have the political intelligence they ought to 
have, considering they are in numbers sufficient 
to control the vote of the township.” 

“ The women of any kind of barbarians always 
have to suffer. Did you ever think of that when 
you let such old patriarchs of misery as that one 
we just passed gang their ain gait?” 


CRAQUE-a-DOOM. 


78 

Well, what can I do for their women ? I tell 
you, Craque-o’‘Doom, these poor devils whom we 
pity have a strong aristocratic tang. There’s that 
girl Tamsin Chenoworth, for instance : she’s as 
proud as a queen in her way. She looks at you 
furtively and suspiciously; her dignity is not to be 
jarred by any fatherly encouragement or advice. 
I’m as free with my old neighbors as any man can 
be, yet I couldn’t say to her, ‘ Tamsin, you had 
better take this course, or that.’ If she goes to the 
dogs, as one of her sisters has been doing, or breaks 
out with the family weakness for stealing, it isn’t my 
fault ; I can’t help it. But at present she’s a very 
good girl, and my aunt takes an interest in her.” 

They returned home long before the mid-day din- 
ner. The young ladies were lounging in the back 
parlor, in Watteau gowns and easy slippers. Jennie 
lay on a sofa, with yards of garnet cashmere trail- 
ing over her feet ; Louise had an easy-chair and a 
hassock, a novel and an amethyst-colored shawl ; 
but Rhoda Jones rocked vigorously, stopping at 
intervals to scribble with a pencil on paper held 
by a reporter’s clip which lay in her lap. “ I’m 
just taking down some impressions,” she had con- 
descended to explain to the girls, who regarded 
her performance with a mixture of amusement and 
dread : they were afraid the remorseless spider in 
her head might at any time rush out to seize upon 
and make meat of them. They had seen her dem- 


THE FLIGHT OF A WHITE-HEAD. 


79 

onstrate that material is material, even if you find 
it in your blood-relations. 

“ If you take down impressions of me,” requested 
Louise, make me immensely stylish. I’ve always 
wanted so much more style than I have. You 
might pile up my blond tresses and leave out the 
switches and top friz. I want a good many lovers, 
because they’re rather scarce in real life.” 

“ I don’t,” murmured Jennie ; “ I want just one, 
— as handsome as he can be, with blue eyes, and 
golden hair, and a moustache the same color, that 
droops down to his chin, and long white hands. 
And he must dance just elegantly, and be three 
or four years older than myself. He’d always 
have to wear nice boots, and those lovely round 
coats without any tails to ’em.” 

“And probably he could make the money to 
buy them just about as well as you could,” said 
Rhoda. 

“ Oh, of course he’d be wealthy and polished.” 

“ The gold-locked men out West, three or four 
years your seniors, usually have the polish which 
grinding for a living gives them, and the wealth of 
hope. They have their fortunes to make, and if they 
dance themselves into fashionable society, usually 
dance into debt too. ‘ Swing low, sweet chariot.’ 
Men are strong, plodding fellows. Women don’t 
marry angels any more. It made a great fuss 
before the Flood.” 


8o 


CRAQUE-O'-DOOM. 


Tom Mills’s voice and one much mellower than 
his were heard in the front hall, together with a 
tramping and lighter patting of feet. The captain 
and his friend were taking off their wraps^ 

My gracious!” exclaimed Louise, starting up. 
Jennie kicked her train off her feet to make a dart 
for the dining-room. 

“Sit down!” said Rhoda Jones menacingly. 
“ You shan’t run away. I could shake you both !” 

“ I shall die if I have to look at him,” pleaded 
Jennie. “ He turns me positively faint.” 

“I don’t care if he does,” said Rhoda: “he’s 
your cousin’s guest, and you are bound to receive 
him.” 

“ He isn’t my cousin’s guest,” began Louise, — 
when a door opened, and Tom entered with the 
dwarf. 

He made his good-morning bow to Rhoda, and 
was presented to the younger girls. They sat in 
embarrassment, looking down at the toes of their 
slippers. 

Craque-o’-Doom found a ready place on a low 
hassock at one side of the fire : it spared him the 
confusion of having to scale a chair. His body 
tapered abruptly from shoulders to feet ; his arms 
were rather long. In a gentleman’s business- or 
morning-suit he appeared a masquerading child, 
while sitting still or until he turned his mature 
face towards the beholder. When he walked, 


THE FLIGHT OF A WHITE-HEAD. gj 

however, his short legs and small feet seemed 
hardly capable of carrying his upper bulk. He 
did not in the least expect any attention, and his 
manner was modest but self-respecting. 

Rhoda noticed how fresh a tinge the ride had 
given his face. She put the reporter’s clip aside^. 
and cast a warning look at the two girls, who in 
their turn cast pleading looks at Tom. 

Tom felt complacent about his own inches, but 
he could see no reason why any woman should 
not find Craque-o’-Doom agreeable society. He 
stood by the mantel and warmed his feet. 

“ Did you have a nice ride?” inquired Rhoda. 

We had a royal progress,” laughed Craque-o’- 
Doom : “ the populace follpwed us.” 

“A lot of the town boys,” explained Captain 
Mills, with a lingering shade of annoyance. They 
tagged the carriage as if we’d a live boa-constrictor 
or an ape inside.” 

Louise telegraphed by a look to Jennie her con- 
currence with the boys’ opinion. But Jennie was 
scanning the little man’s face with astonishment 
that she could do so without screaming. It was 
rather a pleasant sight than otherwise. 

“ You couldn’t put any heroism in the hero of 
such a scene, could you. Miss Jones ?” said he. 

I understand you are one of those fortunate peo- 
ple who go about making mental photographs for 
reproduction in letters.” 

/ 


82 


CRAQUE-O'-DOOM. 


“ Do you call that fortunate ? Why, I have often 
thought my lot a miserable one. If you would 
only be kind enough to say you envy me, now !” 

“ Certainly I envy you such resources.” 

“ Good ! I always wanted to be envied. It has 
been my dream to stalk about the world so fortu- 
nate and immaculate that everybody who saw me 
should turn fairly green. To that end, I am always 
magnifying my good luck and concealing my 
crosses. But don’t ask me to have any opinions 
about heroism : I don’t think I like it. It’s a 
strained, uncomfortable effect ; it’s stagey. He- 
roic people seem to stand under colored or calcium 
lights in a tableau with the curtain just going 
down.” 

Craque-o’-Doom laughed. 

“Ah, I like such things!” exclaimed Jennie 
spontaneously. 

The dwarf half turned his face toward her with 
respectful attention. But Louise, with nervous 
precipitation, sprang up and begged Captain Mills 
to come into the other parlor and try a duet with 
her. 

“ Craque-o’-Doom plays capitally,” exclaimed 
Tom, moved by the obtuse zeal of his sex. — 
“ Come on, old man, and give the girls some 
music.” 

“ If they will remain seated here and not watch 
my contortions at the piano,” he replied, with a 


THE FLIGHT OF A WHITE-HEAD. 83 

delicacy which touched Louise, perhaps I can 
entertain them.” 

Please do,” murmured the young ladies. 

“ But we may applaud ?” said Rhoda. 

“ I am not accustomed to applause,” replied the 
dwarf, smiling, as he rose. 

Tom and he went in to the piano, and they 
heard him rolling a hassock to the piano-stool 
and saying, “ I have to mount these revolving 
light-houses carefully, you know.” Then the keys 
responded to such a touch as had never before vis- 
ited them. He began playing a movement from 
Liszt’s “ Tarantella.” 

“ I don’t know what that is,” murmured Jennie. 
But Rhoda Jones sat rapt. His execution was 
wonderfully brilliant, yet of so sympathetic a qual- 
ity that a listener was always strangely moved 
by it. 

Tom stood, with one hand on his hip, at the end 
of the piano, and watched the dwarf’s lithe, float- 
ing fingers with interest. He would have pre- 
ferred a good tune to which he could pat his toe 
in accompaniment, but it gratified him to see a 
little monstrosity like Craque-o’-Doom so well up 
in a higher kind of gymnastics. It escaped his 
observation that Tamsin Chenoworth’s younger 
sister was at the long veranda-window flattening 
her cheek against the glass in a vain effort to see 
who could be creating such sounds within. 


CRAQUE-O^^DOOM. 


84 

When the selection was finished, a feverish 
hand-clapping in the back parlor succeeded. 

“ I shall not touch that piano again while I am 
here,” said Rhoda decidedly. 

“ Isn’t it queer he can play so ?” whispered 
Louise. 

As Tom moved out of the way, Tillie, on the 
veranda, got a look at the dwarf wriggling off the 
piano-stool. She gave a jump which landed her 
in the path, took to her heels, and banged the 
gate behind her in a mad flight toward home. 


^‘GIVE ME YOUR HAND: 


35 


CHAPTER X. 

‘‘give me your hand.” 

A WINTER thaw made Barnet the most dismal 
place on earth. The pike stood up like a cause- 
way between sluggish streams of water. A land- 
scape of mud and fog, through which the canal 
crept like a yellow snake, cheered the looker-out. 
A smell of stables, of fat burnt half a mile away, 
and an all-prevailing odor of old clothes, invaded 
the most unlikely places. Drip, drip, drip, all day 
and all night long, the rain splashed from the 
eaves. And there was no pleasure in a heaped-up 
fire, for it suffocated. The homesteads looked 
draggled, and smoke trailed along the ground, 
leaving a sediment of soot on fence and despon- 
dent tree. Every umbrella perambulating the 
streets as if under protest said to every other um- 
brella it met, propelled by a pair of high boots 
with pantaloons stuck in them, “ Well, what do 
you think of this weather ?” Trains three miles 
away could be plainly heard breathing, and their 
whistles seemed shrieking in people’s front yards. 

The young ladies at the Hill-house tried to 
return their calls before the date of their depar- 
8 


86 


CRAQUE-a-DOOM. 


ture, but after one or two attempts came driving 
home with flecks of mud on their faces. Barnet 
streets were bottomless. Tom could not take his 
deformed friend out to see his barns, or his vine- 
yard on the side-hill, without the risk of swamp- 
ing him in mud. The most reliable spots of soil 
had grown strangely spongy, and pools stood on 
flat surfaces. 

The first day of this weather the inmates of the 
house laudably attempted to amuse each other, but 
after that there was a natural falling away into 
groups of one or two. The girls lounged in 
Rhoda’s room, where there was an open fire, de- 
claring that the register in their own apartment 
was more than they could endure. Rhoda shut 
herself in the small library, which was little more 
than an alcove off the back parlor, and entered 
upon inky mysteries which she called blocking 
out a short sketch. Captain Mills and his friend 
had each other for constant company. 

Tom was obliged to ride away late on an after- 
noon to attend to some urgent business. “ If we 
could take any kind of a vehicle, I would ask you 
to go along,” he said ruefully : “ the drive might 
be better than moping in the house, though I don’t 
relish the prospect. You’ll have to try and amuse 
yourself. I guess the girls have all taken to 
novels.” 

“ Don’t be disturbed about me,” said Craque-o’- 


“G/FE ME YOUR HAND: 


Doom. “ Though I like your society, as you 
know, I’m accustomed to having a great deal of 
my own. A fellow of my sort studies his re- 
sources. Do you think I shall disturb anybody if 
I thump the piano softly ?” 

“ Not a bit; they enjoy your playing.” 

“ I don’t mean to play, but to see what you have 
in your collection of music.” 

“You won’t find anything to your taste,” ex- 
claimed Captain Tom. “ The fact is, we ain’t 
musical down here. The girls may have brought 
some new pieces, but that old yellow pile all be- 
longed to my sister. I used to like her playing, 
but I didn’t know anything about it. Well, I have 
to be off.” 

“ I hope you’ll have a pleasant ride.” 

Tom twisted his face : “ That can’t be done 
along the bank of a yellow ditch oozing with 
slush.” 

“ Tamsin,” said Aunt Sally to her young hand- 
maid, “ here’s a new calico dress-pattern I’ve had 
around the house since last summer, but never 
made up. That’s Merrimac print, and will wash 
and wear well. This sack and skirt you’ve got on 
is too good to wear about your work in the morn- 
ings. You ought to have a calico ; and now, while 
there’s nothing doing, we’ll cut this out and begin 
to make it up for you.” 

Tamsin’s face, richer in its tones and softer in its 


88 


CRAQUE-a-DOOM. 


lines than it had been a week before, grew warm 
with a flush singularly veiled by its transparent 
olive skin. She said slowly, “ I’m much obliged. 
If you will let it go on my wages — ” 

“ Now, nonsense !” exclaimed Aunt Sally. “ I 
shan’t do anything of the kind. It’s stuff I’ve had 
about the house, and it’ll make you a good dress : 
so say no more about it, but let us get to work.” 

The capable old lady got out her lap-board and 
shears : she had a poor opinion of anything not 
cut on her lap-board. She cut out a yoke for the 
calico dress. It was to be gathered full into a belt, 
hang straight without an overskirt, and have a 
ruffle around the bottom. That was the way they 
cut calico dresses just after the war, and Aunt Sally 
saw no occasion for changing such an excellent 
fashion, if the girls in town did rig themselves out 
and cut good cloth to silly waste. Tamsin, on her 
part, accustomed to the more ancient cutting of 
her mother, who made even Tillie look like a 
small but unrevised edition of our pioneer grand- 
mothers, found the fashion of her new calico pleas- 
ing to her sight. She dimly foresaw the effect on 
a pliant figure, and stitched awkwardly at the 
gathers while Aunt Sally sewed the long seams 
on her old Wheeler & Wilson, — the first machine 
which had ever come into Barnet. 

Over its clatter, minor and major chords, swell- 
ing and receding, came through the dining-room 


‘‘GIVE ME YOUR HAND: 


89 


door with the regular lap of the tide. This music 
stirred queer sensations in Tamsin ; she half re- 
sented being so moved. Time and circumstances 
melted from around her ; she was in a great city, 
in a musky atmosphere, living with intense eager- 
ness and delight. Or some dormant unknown 
power within herself half awoke and muttered 
inaudible promises about her future. 

The sewing-machine clattered on until, all the 
long seams being done. Aunt Sally took off her 
spectacles. “You can go right ahead with your 
work, Tamsin,” said she. “ I must have my nap 
before tea-time. There was a remarkable piece in 
my Bartner of Light I wanted to glance at, too.” 
She added afterward, from the back parlor, “ Tam- 
sin, come in here with your work, and see that 
this fire doesn’t go down. I told Neal to let the 
furnace die out; but we must have some heat in 
the rooms this damp weather.” 

Tamsin brought her sewing to the grate. She 
sat there alone. The eaves dripped, and the woods 
tore rags of cloud which scudded over them. 
Craque-o’-Doom played softly, as if he were whis- 
pering to the piano. The thread knotted as if it 
knew it was in a Chenoworth’s fingers, and as fast 
as she conquered one knot another harder one 
challenged her. She forgot the sound of the 
piano, and was not conscious of any changes in 
the room, until, looking up vaguely disturbed, she 
8 * 


CRAQUE-O^-DOOM. 


90 

saw the dwarf sitting down on a hassock at the 
opposite side of the fire. 

Neither party gave any sign of having noticed 
the other. Craque-o’-Doom warmed his delicate 
hands at the blaze: he loved fire, and huddled 
toward it as toward a companion. The coals mur- 
mured faintly in their self-communing way, and 
occasionally a bit of slate cracked in the heat and 
popped over the bars, as if entirely dissenting from 
what it heard around it. 

Craque-o’-Doom looked at the girl’s bowed face 
and motionless eyelids. Her hand went to and 
fro, drawing a long thread : it was a red hand. 
Her posture was one of reticence and repose. 

“ I saw your father this morning,” said Craque- 
o’-Doom. 

Tamsin raised her head, her black eyes seeming 
to shoot out in her face. She did not speak, but 
looked thoroughly on the defensive. 

The dwarf rested his gaze on her : “ He is an 
old man, and appears as if life had not used him 
kindly.” This mellow voice seemed to be making 
tender excuses for the old Chenoworth’s thriftless- 
ness. “ There is a large family of you ?” 

Tamsin replied, under constraint, “ Yes.” 

“ What are you going to do ?” Here again he 
touched her bruises with a delicate hand. He 
assumed that she meant to do something in the 
world. 


^^GIVE ME YOUR HAND.' 


** I don’t know,” said Tamsin slowly and grop- 
ingly. They still looked straight at each other. 
She added, “Something forTillie, — my little sister.” 

“ You love Tillie ?” 

“Yes,” said Tamsin. But the change in her 
face made him pore over it. 

“Don’t you love your father and all your 
family ?” 

Her face became opaque again, just as cloud 
grows dense over a breaking through of light. 
“ No : I hate ’em,” she said deliberately, as if 
having made up her mind to this confidence. 

He appeared to weigh the statement. “ I have 
no family,” he said wistfully. “ If I had a father, 
I think I could love him.” 

“Yes,” assented Tamsin, “because he wouldn’t 
be good-for-nothing.” She rose up suddenly, 
startled by the loss of her self-control and life-long 
reticence. The calico and scissors fell from her 
lap. “ What makes me talk this way to V she 
said under her breath. 

“ Sit down,” said Craque-o’-Doom. His eyes 
were lambent ; his face worked. Tamsin sat down, 
and reached to gather her materials again. He 
sprang and picked them up for her. “ How like a 
frog I move !” he muttered, looking up at the 
woman’s perplexing face, and, turning, he walked 
across the room, then came back and stood before 
her. “ Did you ever see anything more ridiculous 


CRAQUE-a-DOOM. 


92 

than the figure I cut?” he asked. The girl did not 
reply. She looked at him. He put his hand out 
and seized hers with a grip : “ There ! Does your 
flesh creep, child ?” 

She certainly recoiled, with that glow under the 
skin which was her habit in blushing. Still, the 
recoil was not of a quality which expressed utter 
aversion. He locked his nervous fingers about 
the hand. I am going to do so strange a thing ! 
Child, you are miserable; I can do so much for 
you. Give me this hand, — marry me ! I can see 
great possibilities in you. You shall have a full 
life. Why need you live like a slave, when I can 
open such advantages to you ?” He dropped her 
hand : there was the sound of running feet coming 
down the front stairway. Tamsin moved quickly 
toward the dining-room door. “ If you can con- 
sent to what I have asked,” said Craque-o’-Doom 
distinctly but guardedly, as she turned her cheek 
over her shoulder, taking one more frightened 
glance at him, “ reach out your hand toward me.” 

She disappeared through the door. The supple 
red hand lingered on the knob, was thrust sud- 
denly toward him, and withdrawn just as one of 
the young ladies came into the parlor. 


THEIR PLANS. 


93 


CHAPTER XI. 

THEIR PLANS. 

Rhoda Jones was the first of the household to 
draw with appreciation toward the hearth-flame as 
dusk set in. Neal had remembered the fire which 
Tamsin had deserted ; it glowed up to the chim- 
ney, and its glimmering cheered Captain Tom 
when he rode by to the stables. 

When he entered the room, Rhoda was basking 
there, — alone, as she supposed ; but while Tom 
was turning himself and putting a boot-heel on 
the fender, Craque-o'-Doom let himself down from 
a sofa at the other end of the parlor and ap- 
proached them. 

I didn’t know anybody was about,” said Rhoda 
with a start. “ It’s so dusky back there !” 

And I start out of the dusk like a spider out of 
a web and sling myself off on an invisible thread.” 
He leaned against the mantel, opposite Captain 
Mills, who immediately felt gigantic, and said so. 

“ I feel myself turn into a sort of Gulliver when 
he is by,” said Rhoda. ** It seems as if he were 
the proper size, and all the rest of us monstrous 
growths.” 

“You are very kind people,” said Craque-o’- 


94 


CRAQUE-O'-DOOM. 


Doom : “ Fm sure you do your best to consider 
me human.” He laughed. But I am about to 
tell you something which will shake your faith in 
me as a model pigmy.” He braced himself against 
the mantel and looked up at Tom, as if dreading 
that veteran’s hard sense and practical force. 

” If I am de trop — ” said Rhoda, half rising. 

Craque-o’-Doom motioned her back into her 
seat: “Not at all, Miss Jones. I really think I 
want the support of your presence. — Tom, when 
we were roughing it up in Canada, did you ever 
think I was soft-headed ?” 

“ Why, no ! What do you mean by * soft- 
headed’ ? ” 

“ I mean liable to turn fool. I’ve expected to 
have a lonesome life of it, and prepared myself. 
I give you my word of honor, I never thought of 
marrying till I came here. Richard isn’t the shape 
to attract, and, in face of this truth, I never have 
done any woman the dishonor to think that my 
money might buy her ; but not two hours ago I 
asked a woman to marry me.” 

“The dickens you did!” exclaimed Captain 
Mills, aghast. “ Well, that was better than slump- 
ing along a dirty canal-bank in the rain. What 
did she say ?” 

Craque-o’-Doom folded his arms : “ She didn’t 
refuse.— Miss Jones, I want you to tell me candidly 
if I am taking unfair advantage of that girl.” 


THEIR ELANS. 


95 

What girl ?” interposed Tom. “ You’re taking 
unfair advantage of me. I don’t get hold of the 
thing at all. You say you’ve proposed seriously 
to marry somebody ?” 

“ She has a struggle before her for the bare 
means of life,” continued the dwarf, still address- 
ing Rhoda, and keeping a check on himself. 

Every circumstance is against her. I could give 
her education, travel, refining surroundings. I 
feel certain she could be developed into a remark- 
able woman.” 

“So do I,” coincided Rhoda. — “It’s Tamsin,” 
she said, nodding her head toward Captain Mills. 

He put his hands in his pockets and walked 
across the room whistling. 

“ Now, do you think it would be an unnatural 
and horrible thing to — to — I’ve been puzzling. 
Perhaps I took an unfair advantage of the lonely 
child. She touches me so,” pleaded the dwarf. 
“ Miss Jones, I can’t tell how she moves me. She 
is a mere unformed child : I have thought I might 
educate her and leave her free. But that wouldn’t 
do, — that wouldn’t do. Besides — ” He paused, 
and broke out with a half-fierce exclamation : “ I 
want her ! Do you see me ? She has no horror 
of my shape. Isn’t it wonderful there should be a 
woman who can look at me without shuddering ? 
Come back, Tom : I’m not going to be sentimental 
any further than this.” Captain Mills approached 


CRAQUE-a-DOOM. 


96 

the fire with his face awry. ‘‘So, you see, rm 
afraid my selfishness is going to take undue ad- 
vantage of her. But now tell me honestly, both of 
you : if I make her my wife only in name, and 
give her the opportunities she ought to have, and 
when she is a woman let her choose — A great 
many things might happen, — my death, you know, 
— in case she elected not to — ” He looked down 
at his hands, as though he held his ravelled sen- 
tences hopelessly there. 

“ Craque-o’-Doom,” said Tom, resting one palm 
on the wall above the mantel, like a man bracing 
the established order of things, “ I’m afraid you’re 
going to make a confounded fool of yourself. — 
Excuse me. Miss Rhoda. — Now, what under the 
heavens can you want of that girl ?” 

“ Captain Mills,” put in Rhoda decidedly, “ I 
think the whole thing’s splendid. I never should 
have thought of it ; but it’s like a fairy-story for 
Tamsin.” 

“ For Tamsin ? Oh, yes ! But see here, now. 
Here’s a man, he has money, education, and 
talents enough to balance his deformity, and he’s 
going to pick up one of our Chenoworths ! Why, 
Craque-o’-Doom, they’re low: they couldn’t ap- 
preciate the barest idea of yours, and they’d all 
prey on you like rats. I don’t say but the girl’s a 
good girl — ” 

“ She is,” pronounced the dwarf, frowning. 


THEIR PLANS. 


97 


“ But she’s not your equal, and never will be.” 

“ You don’t know that,” said Rhoda. 

“ Pshaw !” growled the captain. Why, I’m 
thunderstruck ! Marry, man, if you want to, of 
course : you don’t have to ask my advice ; but I 
do hate to see you stoop down to the gutter. Oh, 
yes, she’d take you : I don’t doubt it for a minute. 
Why shouldn’t she ? But after you’d mismatched 
yourself, what then ? Good Lord, boy ! you 
ought to see the whole tribe of Chenoworths ! 
A pretty connection they will be. Because you 
are unfortunate in one single particular, there’s no 
use in throwing yourself away entirely.” 

Tom, I don’t expect you to see the thing as I 
do, and a man of my sort must necessarily suffer 
more crosses than anybody else.” The dwarf’s 
nostrils flared, and the clear white of his face be- 
came more apparent. I simply beg of you to 
forbear with me. I cannot explain to you how I 
am impelled to this thing, nor how I regard this 
young lady, with all her drawbacks.” 

“This young lady^ Rhoda patted her palms 
together. 

Tom stooped over the hearth and offered his 
hand to his friend. They exchanged a hearty 
grasp. You must pardon me, Craque-o’-Doom. 
I don’t mean to offend you : I was sort of taken 
back. They say folks always will meddle with 
other folks’ marriages. I won’t say another word.” 

E ^ 9 


CRA Q UE- O’-D 0 OM 


98 

‘‘But what are your plans?” inquired Rhoda 
with energetic interest. 

The dwarf replied to her inquiry with a puzzled 
face : “ I haven’t any. Must I make plans ?” 

“ Certainly. I am going to be married, and I 
have lots of plans. Are you going to take charge 
of the child soon, or let her be as she is awhile ?” 

“Soon, I should think, if she is willing.” 

Tom groaned. Both looked up at him. “ I 
didn’t say anything,” said he. 

“You didn’t make half so much fuss over my 
prospective taking off,” said Rhoda, shaking her 
head at him. 

“ The whole thing is so new to me,” pleaded the 
dwarf. “ I don’t know what is best for her. I 
never had much experience with women.” 

“You’ll have to ask her father, you know,’* 
mentioned Captain Mills, pulling down the ends 
of his moustache. 

“ Of course,” said Craque-o’-Doom with child- 
like simplicity. But his eyes still turned to Rhoda 
for counsel. “ If that odd preliminary which you 
call getting married were over,” he continued, “ I 
think I should like to put her to some good school 
of your choosing, — right away.” 

Miss Jones inwardly ejaculated over the weak- 
ness and helplessness which men are constantly 
revealing between the joints of their noble armor. 
Craque-o -Doom had impressed her as a condensed 


THEIR FLANS. 


99 

man of fine quality : he ought to come out a bold 
cavalier under circumstances which belittled his 
brethren. “ Well, but that ‘odd preliminary’ re- 
quires consideration. You have to prepare for 
it; you have to set a day, and get the legal 
papers and a minister; the friends of the contract- 
ing parties must be consulted, — unless you steal 
your bride away, as the Romans despoiled the 
Sabines.” 

The dwarf pressed his handkerchief to his fore- 
head : “ I wouldn’t do that, of course. I should 

want to take her honorably and deliberately into 
my care.” 

“ Now you’re talking sense,” exclaimed the cap- 
tain. “ Give yourself time ; deliberate over it. 
Tamsin’s not much more than a child, as you say. 
Six months from now, if you insist on making a 
match of it, will do well enough.” 

“ But meantime she ought to be improving her- 
self.” 

“ Oh, she won’t do any worse than she’s been 
doing.” 

“ You would counsel me to let her lose six 
months of her best time ?” 

“ I’m not saying anything, mind. Why, man, 
you act as if she were a suddenly discovered gem 
whom nobody could properly set but yourself!” 

“ You never thought of setting her or bringing 
out her brilliancy, did you ?” 


100 


CJ?A Q UE- a -DOOM. 


‘*No, I never did: the Chenoworths are too 
many for me. If I begai^ that sort of thing, I’d 
never get to the end of it.” 

“ What you have to do,” exclaimed Rhoda with 
a slight tinge of impatience, “ is to consult Tamsin 
and see what she wishes.” 

Craque-o’-Doom folded and unfolded his arms 
and braced himself more firmly against the mantel : 

Miss Jones, you are very kind, and you know a 
young girl better than I do. Perhaps, after all, I 
have presumed in taking a mere motion of hers 
for a consent which I very much desired. If you 
would see her — ” 

“ Tamsin never has much to say for herself,” 
corroborated Tom in a relieved tone. — “ If you 
had a downright talk with her. Miss Rhoda — ” 

“ I’d try to make her appreciate the position,” 
said Rhoda. 

A tinkle at the farther end of the room, followed 
by the mild outblooming of a wax light, another 
and another, called their attention to Tamsin light- 
ing the three-branched candlestick on a table. 
Aunt Sally had sent her down by way of the front 
stairway to supply Neal’s place while he went on 
an errand. The group remained silent while she 
wheeled the table forward. She then carried a 
taper to the candlestick at each end of the mantel. 

Both men looked at her as she stood on the rug 
extending her arm. 


THEIR FLANS. 


lOI 


“We were just talking about you, Tamsin,’* 
said Captain Mills. “ You’d better leave the light- 
ing up to somebody else : these two want to say 
something to you.” 

“Now, if that isn’t just like a man!” thought 
Rhoda. “ He puts things in a jumble and expects 
somebody else to get them out.” 

Having touched the candles, Tamsin threw her 
burnt taper into the grate. She stood with her 
eyes down, visibly quivering. 

“Sit down,” said Miss Jones, drawing her to a 
convenient chair. “ Don’t be alarmed by this sol- 
emn fuss : it’s in the masculine nature to be pom- 
pous and cumbersome. Captain Mills merely 
wanted to congratulate you. Mr. Sutton has been 
telling us, you see. I congratulate you with all 
my heart: I think it’s wonderful and delightful. 
You’re quite the heroine of a fairy-story. While 
I consider fairies things of the imagination, and 
sentiment quite out of place in this present world, 
there’s some sentiment or witchery in this which 
I appreciate.” While Rhoda rattled ahead, the 
younger girl was gazing at her with piteous appeal, 
as if in a torment she could not express, and the 
dwarf in some plidnt and bewildered mood strange 
to his experience, waiting to be placed or guided. 
— “ Captain Mills, you haven’t taken Tamsin by 
the hand and congratulated her formally, however 
you may have done with Mr. Sutton.” 

9 * 


102 


CI^A Q UE- O’ -DOOM. 


The captain took Tamsin’s motionless hand and 
congratulated her, with helpless grooves in his 
cheeks. She made no response. 

“ And now,” said Rhoda, seizing her wrist in a 
confidential way, “ Mr. Sutton says he will see 
your family at once.” 

Tamsin winced. Rhoda felt it, and patted her 
hand caressingly. 

“ If you wish it,” said Craque-o’-Doom, gazing 
on her averted face, “ if you wish to — to come into 
my care. If you do not, my child, I will think 
nothing of the little sign you were so kind as to 
give me. It would be my desire to take you away 
with me immediately and place you where you 
could be educated under the oversight of a lady 
like Miss Jones. But if you would rather take six 
months to think about it, I will leave at once and 
wait. Or I will go and never come back again, if 
you say so.” 

Tamsin sat like a stone figure. 

“Well, Tamsin?” said Captain Mills interrog- 
atively. He felt strained and annoyed. 

It was a surprise to see Tamsin turn toward 
him. She looked up his length and dwelt on his 
face ; then she looked at her wooer. He was 
turning whiter every moment. “ I could go now,” 
she said. “ But there’s Tillie.” 

“You can have her with you,” said Craque-o’- 
Doom. 


THEIR FLANS. 


103 

Rhoda noticed a tremor pass through the wrist 
she held. 

“ Thank you.” 

” I thank said the dwarf. He shaded his 
face with his hand. You can have your sister 
with you in everything,” he continued, “and give 
her whatever you wish.” 

“ Thank you,” whispered Tamsin, again. 

“ You see, I don’t want to make you unhappy 
in any way,” explained Craque-o’-Doom. 

Tamsin looked into the fire. 

“ Now, Tamsin — ” said Aunt Sally, entering 
from the dining-room. — “ Why, here you all are 
around the fire. — Tamsin ?” She put on her glasses 
and looked at them with a puzzled face. 

“ We’re going to part with Tamsin, aunt,” said 
Tom, wheeling slowly. “ My friend here proposes 
to marry her and send her to school.” 

Aunt Sally stared at every one in turn : “ Who ? 
— Mr. Sutton ? Going to marry Tamsin ?” The 
unnaturalness of such a match rendered her speech- 
less. She said no more, but went to the table, and, 
taking up Andrew Jackson Davis, began to turn 
the leaves with an air of intense preoccupation 
and interest. 

The clock ticked very loud. But Rhoda kept 
on patting and stroking that poor hand which was 
being given away under general disapproval. 


104 


CRAQUE-O'^-DOOM. 


CHAPTER XII. 

TILLIE. 

It was the very next forenoon that old Mr. 
Chenoworth was surprised by a call from the 
dwarf. He was hammering at a chair-bottom. 
The naked floor showed a stain or two of grease, 
trodden into it by careless feet around the break- 
fast-table; his wife sat mending variegated trou- 
sers ; Sarah Jane, with her sickly baby on her hip, 
trailed disconsolately about at some domestic task; 
ridges of dry mud stood on the rough boards ; a 
sobbing stick of wood on the rusty fire-irons sent 
out puffs of smoke at the old man, as if to further 
cure his dry, shrivelled skin. 

Tillie leaned against the unpainted strip which 
served as window-sill, in one of her rare quiet 
moods. Her eyes looked deep, and her lips 
moved occasionally as she told some story to her- 
self or repeated odd scraps and words which the 
outside world suggested to her. “ I see a horse 
and buggy cornin’,” droned Tillie. “ It’s Tamsin, 
cornin’ to take me to a picnic ’way up in the clouds. 
We’ll wear dresses that hang out behind us ever 
so, like them girls up at Mills’s. We’ll have tur- 


TILLIE. 


105 

key and cake and ice-cream. Here’s the carnage. 
Stop, carriage, and let me git in. — It is a-stoppin’ !” 
concluded the child in astonishment. — “Daddy, 
the’s somebody come.” 

“It’s just Arter,” said Sarah Jane: “I saw him 
crossin’ the common.” 

“ ’Tain’t, either. Oh, my ! let me git under the 
bed ! — It’s that little bit of a man, mammy ! He’s 
cornin’ into our house !” 

Out of the mud-splashed coupe Craque-o’- 
Doom descended to the gate, and made his way 
with difficulty on chips and bits of board to the 
door-step. 

“ You open the door, Sary Jane,” said Mrs. 
Chenoworth when his rap was heard. — “ Come 
out from behind my cheer, Tillie. Nobody ain’t 
goin’ to hurt you. How simple you are !” 

The old man suspended his chair-mending as 
Sarah Jane opened the door and stood with her 
baby on her hip. The dwarf lifted his hat : “ Is 
Mr. Chenoworth at home ?” 

“Yes; he’s here. Will you come in?” He 
came in, and Tillie disappeared behind her mother. 

To a suitor of his organization, the place was 
most trying. These untutored people looked at 
him as if he had been a strange, harmless reptile. 
Sarah Jane’s baby began to cry, and she felt war- 
ranted to assure it audibly, “ Hush, you little cross- 
patch ! ’Twon’t hurt ye !” 


I 06 CRAQUE-O^-DOOM. 

Tom had offered to come with his friend, but 
Craque-o’-Doom spared him. 

“ Are you Mr. Chenoworth ?” said the dwarf, ad- 
dressing the old man. “ Yes, I remember your face: 
I saw you passing along the road a few days ago.” 

The chair-maker dropped his under jaw and 
peered round-eyed through his spectacles. To 
hear of a dwarf is one thing ; to see him striding 
on span-long legs before you is another. 

“ Set a cheer, Sary Jane,” said Mrs. Chenoworth 
in a doubtful tone; but their visitor scaled it 
dexterously. 

“ It’s very muddy weather,” volunteered Sarah 
Jane in addition. She wanted people to know she 
had been away from Barnet and knew how to act 
in company, if she was unfortunate. 

“Yes, the road is bad,” said Craque-o’-Doom. 
He saw the smoke-grimed walls, the dull, poverty- 
tried faces. Tillie peeped cautiously around the 
legs of her mother’s chair, and he saw her. 

“ That’s my baby,” said Mrs. Chenoworth, with 
a diffident cough and toothless smile. “She’s 
afeard.” 

“ Don’t be afraid of me, Tillie,” begged Craque- 
o’-Doom with a thread of pain in his voice. But 
Tillie quite disappeared and stuffed herself under 
the chair-seat. His actually knowing her name 
was so uncanny! “Come out and talk to me. 
I’ve brought you a message from Tamsin.” 


TILLIE, 


107 

Tillie ruminated before she looked cautiously at 
him again. He sat quite still and harmless ; his 
legs hung down a very little distance, but his face, 
though it wore an anxious look, rather won on 
her favor. 

“ Tillie,” said Sarah Jane, if you don’t come 
out o’ there. I’ll pull ye out, or git Arter to. 
Folks ’ll think you ain’t learnt no manners.” 

The hulking cousin had just entered through 
the back door. He was a domestic loafer, who 
preferred a kindred fireside to the down-town 
store-counters. After a prolonged gaze at Craque- 
o’-Doom, he took a seat by the chimney, and sat 
evidently congratulating himself on being there 
for the occasion. 

“ What word did she send ?” inquired Tillie, 
popping her head wearily around the chair. 

“ She would like to have you come and take 
hold of my hand.” 

I can’t do that, ary time.” 

You mustn’t mind what she says,” observed 
Mrs. Chenoworth, with an apologetic glimmer on 
her face. “ We’ve humored Tillie so much she’s 
spilet.” 

Mr. Chenoworth had been wondering what this 
visit meant. He now made a motion as if he in- 
tended to resume his chair-mending, but checked 
himself and hospitably requested Arter to give that 
’ere stick of wood a kick and make it burn better. 


I08 CRAQUE-a-DOOM. 

Arter kicked it with a boot very much out of repair, 
and upset one of the andirons, righted it with his 
calloused hand, and jumped at the burn, grinning 
around on the other inmates as he rubbed and 
nursed his hand on his knee. 

How cloddish and unsavory poor Tamsin’s 
people were ! They seemed to have neither the 
instinctive method of brutes nor the reasoning fore- 
thought of man. 

“ I came to speak to you about your daughter 
Tamsin, Mr. Chenoworth,” said the dwarf. 

The old man made a grimace by twisting up one 
side of his cheek, which he scratched with dirty 
nails. What’s she been doin’ ?” he inquired dis- 
consolately. 

“ Nothing, — except making friends who esteem 
her.” Craque-o’-Doom’s refined face put on an ap- 
pealing expression. He felt more distressed and 
at a greater disadvantage than ever before in his 
life. “I want to marry her and take her away 
with me, if you consent to it.” 

Mr. Chenoworth bent forward, puckering his 
tufted gray brows. He gave a half-humorous 
chuckle : “ Sho, now ! You don’t want to git 
mornedf What you want to git morried for?” 

“ I am wealthy,” the dwarf continued, his steel- 
gray eyes glowing with white heat ; “ I can give 
her every luxury and advantage, with the only 
drawback that you see, — a deformed husband. She 


TILLIE, 


109 

has signified her willingness to take me, but of 
course I want the sanction of her parents.” 

For the first time in his existence, Craque-o- 
Doom felt the arrogant power of money. “ I am 
wealthy” swept over his listeners like a wave which 
returned to him bearing a full freight of deference. 

Tamsin’s a good girl,” murmured Mrs. Cheno- 
worth. 

“ She is, madam. And I will do everything in 
my power to make such a woman of her as you 
will be proud of” 

Sarah Jane’s face puckered with a spasm of envy. 
She shook the whimpering baby. Arter, with 
the mouth and eyes of a fish, sat devouring this 
astounding scene. 

“ How much might you be worth. Mister ?” 

inquired the old man, affecting a cautious tone. 

“ I beg your pardon,” said Craque-o’-Doom, 
taking a card-case from an inner pocket. “ Here 
is my name and address : in my confusion at first 
I forgot to introduce myself You can make in- 
quiries about me of Captain Mills, one of your most 
reliable neighbors.” 

Yes,” replied the old man, nervously doubling 
the pasteboard with his fingers, while his mind 
staggered beneath this new weight of courtesy, “ I 
knowed who you was, and that you b’longed up 
at the Hill-house. The boys they seed you ; Tillie 
she seed you, too. I s’pose it’s all right.” 

10 


no 


C/^A Q UE- O'-D 0 OM. 


As to the question you asked,” continued 
Craque-o’-Doom, “ I have property amounting to 
several hundred thousand dollars, and I have a 
good head for managing it.” 

Mrs. Chenoworth had dropped her sewing and 
leaned her head to one side. The old man gave a 
gasp and swallowed : ” Sho ! Did you make all 
that in the show-business ?” 

“ I never was in any show-business. I inherited 
it from my father.” 

Mr. Chenoworth stared in a trance of astonish- 
ment that so much wealth should be not only 
within hearing distance, but on the border of his 
family. 

“ Well, what is your answer ?” said the dwarf, 
anxious to bring this conference to a close. 

“ Oh, I s’pose it’s all right. — Ain’t it, mammy ?” 
responded the old man with an affected indifference 
not to be found outside of the poor-white type. 

“ I hain’t no objections,” said Mrs. Chenoworth 
in a quavering, deferential tone. ” The children 
gener’ly does as they want to.” 

” Thanks I Then I may marry your daughter 
from your house? I prefer, on all accounts, to 
take her directly from her own home.” All eyes 
roamed about the place and came back to Craque- 
o’-Doom. Queer as his figure was, he looked so 
daintily foreign to such surroundings that an em- 
barrassed silence followed. “ I think it only 


TILLIE. 


Ill 


proper,” he added, that her own parents and 
home should give her to me.” 

Mrs. Chenoworth was touched, and wiped one 
eye with the back of her finger : “ You and her 
can git married here if you want to. But you’re 
used to so much better things than poor folks 
has !” 

That will make no difference whatever.” 
Craque-o’-Doom moved to -descend from his 
chair, when Tillie advanced and stood within a 
few feet of him. She had gradually crept out of 
her concealment and stretched her thin neck after 
every item of the conversation. He waited, and 
smiled kindly into her pale-blue eyes : “ Will you 
shake hands with me when I am your brother ?” 

“You ain’t a-goin’ to be my brother,” resisted 
Tillie. “You’re too little.” She puckered her 
face and drew a sob. 

“ Tut-tut!” said the old father sharply. 

“ But you may go with Tamsin, and she will 
give you everything in the world you want. Look 
at me, Tillie : am I so frightful to you ?” 

“You don’t look as bad as ye did at first. But 
I don’t want you to git married to Tamsin. Her 
and me is such friends I She could marry her 
sister.” The Chenoworth idea of intermarriage 
appeared to have no limit in Tillie’s view. 

“ But wouldn’t you like to have Tamsin go to 
school and learn everything?” 


II2 


Cl? A Q UE- a~D O OM. 


To play music ?” 

‘‘Yes.” 

“ And to dance like them girls up there ?” 

“ Yes, And grow so beautiful and know so 
much that you would be proud of her ?” He 
drew his pictures for the child with a wistful, 
patient tenderness to which she insensibly re- 
sponded, and which touched the others in different 
ways. Arter sulked forward with forearms on his 
knees ; poor Sarah Jane settled into piteous long- 
ing ; the father and mother listened in dazed and 
stolid silence. “ Wouldn’t you like to see her in 
pretty dresses riding behind fine horses, or in her 
own house, which is very much prettier than Cap- 
tain Mills’s?” 

“Yes; I wouldn’t mind that,” relented Tillie. 
“ But I don’t want her to git married.” 

“ And wouldn’t you like to go with her to the 
sea-side, and have a little bathing-suit, and take 
baths, and watch all the great people from the 
cities in gorgeous dresses, and have a pony and 
carriage of your own — a wee pony so little you 
could climb on him from the ground ?” 

“Yes; I wouldn’t mind that,” admitted Tillie, 
with a deep breath. “ But she won’t like me any 
more.” 

“ She will love you more dearly than ever ; she 
will have more time to be with you. You may go 
with her through her school course ; and when- 


TILLIE, 


II3 

ever I send Tamsin a gift there will be one for her 
little sister with it.” 

“ He’s a rich man,” said the old father, nodding 
to Tillie with emphasis. 

The child kindled with anticipations : “ And 

will you git mammy a new coffee-pot ? The old 
one leaks all over the stove.” 

“ Sh !” hissed Sarah Jane, while the mother 
wiped her eyes and laughed weakly. 

“ Certainly,” said Craque-o’-Doom. “ Ask her 
to accept this as a present from Tamsin.” He took 
from his breast-pocket a large sealed envelope, in 
which, before starting, he had placed a pile of 
bank-bills with a confused desire to do something 
for Tamsin’s relatives and a fear that he could not 
do it delicately. 

Tillie approached a step nearer and took hold 
of the envelope : “ What’s this here ?” 

“ Something which Tamsin sends your mother.” 

Tillie felt of it. 

“ Give it over to me,” said old Mr. Chenoworth, 
extending his hand. The child obeyed him. His 
tone and his greedy motion repelled the dwarf. 

Craque-o’-Doom descended from his chair with 
his hat in his hand. He did not want to see the 
old man pry into the envelope. A sudden shudder 
ran through him. They were all so indifferent; it 
was like barter and sale. ^‘Tamsin will return 
home,” he said; “I will send her down in my 
h 10* 


CRAQUE-a-DOOM. 


1 14 

vehicle. I would like to have the — the ceremony 
take place two days from this time. She can make 
any arrangements she pleases.” 

‘‘ I s’pose it’s all right,” repeated Mr. Cheno- 
worth monotonously, rubbing and gripping the 
envelope. He was embarrassed, but quite uncon- 
scious of behaving in a singular manner. The 
deformed man magnetized and overpowered him. 

“ She ought to be thankful the longest day she 
lives for such a chance !” burst from Sarah Jane’s 
fountain of general injuries. But Tamsin never 
will : she’s too big-feelin’ !” 

The dwarf had already reached the door. He 
bowed himself out, apparently not hearing this 
remark. Tillie followed. 

“ I don’t call it much of a chance,” growled 
Arter, lifting himself after the door closed, — ” her 
gittin’ married to a little bit of a critter all shut up 
together like that.” 

“ She wouldn’t have you, Arter, nohow,” said 
the old man with a hard-featured smile as he ran 
his forefinger under the flap of the envelope. 

How much is it, daddy ?” inquired Sarah Jane. 
She brought the baby and stood by him. Arter 
looked on with dogged interest ; the mother left 
her mending and approached. They counted the 
rustling notes. 

“ As much as three hundred dollars !” said Sarah 
Jane. “Tam can have everything heart can wish. 


TILLIE. 


II5 

an’ me a-slavin’ around, and this cross young-one 
— Shut up, or ni slap ye good !” 

“ ’Tisn’t the poor baby’s fault that it’s here, 
Sary Jane,” remonstrated her mother with plain- 
tive resentment. 

I don’t care,” said Sarah Jane, crying ; it’s 
somebody’s fault that I have things so hard and 
Tam has ’em so easy !” 

Craque-o’-Doom had just leaned back in his 
carriage, conscious that heads were staring from all 
the little houses around, feeling an odd sickness 
at heart, and convinced that Tamsin Chenoworth 
could scarcely fall into poorer hands than those 
from which he was taking her, when a voice called 
to him. He looked out of the coupe-window and 
saw Tillie sitting on the gate-post. The driver 
started. Wait a minute,” said Craque-o’-Doom. 

“ I said I’d thought it over,” repeated Tillie, 
“and I don’t want none o’ them things. I just 
want Tamsin. I think more o’ her ner anything 
else. Ye can’t have her.” 

Craque-o’-Doom laughed, feeling his breath 
come more freely. He threw a kiss at the tallow- 
colored child as his vehicle started. 

“ Ph !” blew Tillie, dabbing her hand at him in 
a resentful fashion. “ You quit throwin’ your old 
kisses at me: I won’t have ’em. Tamsin’s niy 
sister; she ain’t yours. And you can’t git her 
for kisses, neither : so you stop your old self.” 


ii6 


CRAQUE-O^-DOOM. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

THE ODD PRELIMINARV”. 

Perhaps there never was a more wretched day 
than the one appointed for solemnizing the tie 
which Craque-o’-Doom had called that odd pre- 
liminary.” Mud and sky seemed longing to meet, 
and a driving rain did its best to create such a 
union. Smoke and draggling cloud could not be 
distinguished. Farmers coming to the village on 
loaded wagons were obliged to turn out of the 
impassable roads and open ways through sodden 
fields. The Hill-house party, having prolonged 
their stay from a sympathetic curiosity in the 
dwarfs wedding, were to be carried with him to 
the railroad-station that day, — a nearly impos- 
sible journey had not the railroad intersected the 
pike. 

Of course Tamsin’s preparations were small. 

“ If you will be so kind,” said Craque-o’-Doom 
to Rhoda, “ as to take her in charge and buy her 
a full outfit when we reach the city, I shall be^ 
under further obligations.” 

'‘Don’t feel distressed about any obligations,” 
urged Miss Jones: “there’s nothing I delight in 


THE ODD PRELIMINARY. 


117 

more than spending money. I never had much 
of my own to spend, and I take a savage joy in 
getting hold of other people’s and disbursing it. 
I know just what Tamsin wants, — she wants pretty 
nearly everything, poor child ! — and you may rely 
on me to choose it for her.” 

Jennie and Louise convened in Rhoda’s room, 
and were anxious to do something for the bride. 

“ I never heard of such a match,” declared Jen- 
nie ; ” but of course it’s a great thing for her. Aunt 
Sally says her sisters turned out badly: I hope 
nothing’ll happen to disappoint the poor girl. Do 
you suppose she likes him ?” 

Louise shook her head very positively: “He 
isn’t bad-looking in the face, but oh, my, Jen ! just 
think of walking into church with a man whose 
head wouldn’t reach the top of the pews, and 
everybody staring at you ! Would any amount 
of money make you do it? He can’t dance. 
She’ll have to pay some attention to him. If I had 
to sit at home alone with him and look at him a 
whole evening, I should go out of my senses.” 

“So should I. But Cousin Tom is so mad 
about it! He seems to think Mr. Craque-o’- 
Doom, or whatever his name is, could marry a 
princess if he wanted to. I wonder if he’ll get 
her diamonds? Oh, wouldn’t she be in luck if 
he’d die and leave her a rich widow while she’s at 
school 1 It must be splendid to be a young widow 


ii8 


CRAQUE-a-DOOM. 


with lots of money ! Widows are so much more 
independent than girls.” 

“ Well, there’s nothing sentimental in that,” re- 
marked Rhoda : still, I don’t quite approve of it. 
But you needn’t go to overhauling your wardrobes. 
We’re not to sew for Tamsin or bestow anything 
upon her : she’s to wear a long cloak over her red- 
and-black dress, a felt hat, and some gloves. They’re 
my things ; and I have to take them back when she 
gets her outfit.” 

“Won’t she make a funny -looking bride?” 
mused Jennie. 

“ Poor child ! She’s going into the care of a 
good guardian, rather than getting married. I 
don’t think of her as a bride, but as an adopted 
orphan starting to boarding-school.” 

“ It’s funny to watch Aunt Sally since this busi- 
ness came on the carpet,” laughed Jennie: “she’s 
so puzzled, and so kind. She doesn’t know how 
to treat Tamsin, and she looks at that little man 
as if he were a frog going to lap in a fly and she 
ought to drive him off.” 

Tamsin had gone home the day before her wed- 
ding. About dusk Craque-o’-Doom drove to her 
father’s gate, but before he could alight she came 
running out wrapped in her old faded shawl. 
“Don’t come in,” she said at the carriage-door, 
without assigning any reason for the request. Her 
eyelids looked dark and swollen. 


THE ODD PRELIMINARY. 


II9 

“Get in the carriage, then,” said he. “You 
must not stand with the rain drizzling on you.” 

“ I can’t,” said Tamsin ; “ I must go straight 
back.” 

With some authority he turned down the step 
and drew her to a seat. She leaned back opposite 
him. “ I merely came to see if there was anything 
else for me to attend to,” said Craque-o’-Doom. “ Is 
there ?” 

“ I don’t know,” said Tamsin. Her throat 
swelled, and the exclamation seemed to burst 
from it : “ Tillie can’t go !” 

“ Can’t go with you ?” 

“ No.” 

“ Why not?” 

“They won’t let her. They say she mustn’t 
leave home.” She hid her face under a corner 
of her shawl. 

The dwarf’s hands trembled; but he locked 
them together : “ Poor child ! that is a bitter dis- 
appointment to you.” 

“ I’ve never been away from Tillie.” 

He meditated in deep disquiet : “ But they will 
let her come to you often ?” 

“ I don’t know.” 

“ At any rate, you can come to see her as much 
as you wish.” After an instant he added, “Will 
this make any difference about your going, my 
child ? It is not too late to draw back yet ; a 


120 


CRAQUE-0''-D00M. 


young girl may change her mind at the last min- 
ute in such an important step. Speak out.” 

Tamsin put down her shawl. “ No, it won’t 
make any difference,” she said. 

The dwarf gripped his hands together. 

She descended the step to go into the house, he 
helping her. The old shawl caught on a projec- 
tion, and while he was loosening it he broke a bit 
of the fringe off : this he clutched under his nails 
into his palm. “ I shall come for you at ten in the 
morning,” said he. 

At ten on that dark, ugly wedding-day, there- 
fore, the coupe stood at Chenoworth’s gate, and 
Tom and Rhoda dismounted with Craque-o’- 
Doom. The neighborhood was agog. 

Within, the preacher then stationed with Barnet 
Methodist Church waited the bridegroom’s party. 
The room had been cleaned ; a pleasant odor of 
coffee came from the kitchen. Sarah Jane con- 
ducted the party into the single other apartment to 
lay off their wrappings on a bed where her baby 
was asleep. Tamsin sat here, away from the fire, 
holding Tillie on her lap. The child’s face was 
hid in Tamsin’s neck. When Craque-o’-Doom 
approached them the little one looked up and 
kicked backward viciously at him. 

Captain Mills made an uneasy attempt to be 
pleasant with old Mr. Chenoworth, who had shaved 
and looked more cured about the skin than ever. 


THE ODD PRELIMINARY. 


I2I 


in spite of some bleeding cuts. The mother had 
a clean white cloth folded kerchief-wise about 
her shoulders ; Mary and her half-dozen squalid 
children were there, sitting in a sallow row, all 
alike excepting in size ; Arter peeped in from the 
kitchen, scowling at everything he saw. The dom- 
icile had taken on a very perceptible air of im- 
portance : everybody in the street knew that Tarn- 
sin was marrying a man rolling in wealth. Some 
neighbors reprehended the match : they would not 
on any account see their daughters tied to such a 
sight as that dwarf. Others hoped Tamsin might 
never come to grief for jumping at money that 
way : Mary and Sarah Jane had both had their 
come-downs : Tamsin wasn’t the first Chenoworth 
that left the family to do better and had to come 
back to it. 

There was a gang of her kindred in the kitchen, 
collected to eat at the wedding-feast, but not on 
any account would they show themselves to the 
fine people, though their noses and eyes lined the 
door-crack to get a glimpse of the dwarf. 

“They’re waitin’ on ye, Tamsin,’’ said Mrs. 
Chenoworth, looking into the bedroom. 

Craque-o’-Doom stood at a front window, but 
on hearing this he approached. The girl put her 
sister down. Tillie turned her face to the wall, 
and refused to look. 

The two went into the general room, where the 

F II 


122 


CRAQUE-O^-DOOM. 


minister stood, and Tom and Rhoda were ner- 
vously trying to converse, while Mary jerked her 
sharp, haggard face at her whispering offspring 
and motioned the yellow cousin she had married 
back into the kitchen. 

Tom turned his face away from the pair when 
they were seated side by side : this unusual posi- 
tion was an accident. Tamsin sank into a chair, 
and Craque-o’-Doom took his place near her. 
When the ceremony was finished, Rhoda inter- 
vened between the bride and a rather pompous 
parade of congratulations from her friends. Coffee 
and some other refreshments came in, served in a 
glaring new set of stone-ware china, interspersed 
among which was a cracked plate or two of the 
old stock. 

Then Tamsin had her wraps on. She was not 
troubled with luggage. She shook hands with all 
her people, the women kissing her and Mrs. 
Chenoworth wiping her own eyes with a plaintive 
gesture. None of them approached Craque-o’- 
Doom. Tillie made a plunge, and was held to the 
poor bride’s breast until her wailings were some- 
what quieted. She took refuge with her mother, 
and the party drove away. 

Tom Mills had insisted on giving them a second 
breakfast at his house, but there was only time to 
reach the station in good season for the train. 
Jennie and Louise, who were waiting at home, saw 



i 


%- 


f 






THE ODD PRELIMINARY. 


123 

the carriage wallow out of the by-road and turn 
east on the turnpike, and, somewhat disappointed, 
hastened their own preparations for departure. 
Neal drove the Mills carriage on the sweep, and 
they embraced Aunt Sally in farewell. The old 
lady looked sadly through her glasses at such a 
wedding-day, but she did not neglect, at the last 
moment, to tuck two or three Banners of Light 
into the girls’ lunch-basket. 

Both carriages arrived at the station in a pour 
from the trailing skies. There was no awkward 
waiting about, for the train came just as the party 
got their tickets and checks ready. 

Tom stood on the platform under an umbrella 
after he had helped the girls embark and taken 
charge of Craque-o’-Doom’s horse and carriage, 
which the driver was to bring with him in a car 
chartered for that purpose, attached to a train 
which followed this one. 

They were all seated in the parlor-car. The 
dwarf waved his hand as he glided past, and Tom 
stood looking after him, saying aloud, “ Poor, 
poor, poor fellow !” 


124 


CRA Q UE- 0^-D 0 OM. 


CHAPTER XIV. 

“ BUT AFTERWARD.” 

It was ten o’clock on the next night but one 
when Rhoda Jones led her charge to their joint 
sleeping-room in a hotel. They had been travel- 
ling a day and a night. Louise Latta and Jennie 
Mills left the party at a certain junction to take 
their own road homeward, which was very short. 
They escaped the all-night smothering in poorly- 
ventilated berths, though they breathed a couple 
of sighs in losing sight of Rhoda and Tamsin and 
the dwarf and the parlor-car. 

Tamsin paused in front of the open fire, — a very 
special apartment had been prepared for them, — 
but Rhoda moved briskly around, taking off her 
wraps and opening her travelling-bags. She got 
out two dressing-sacks covered with little tabs of 
ribbon and lace, and, having made herself as cosey 
as possible, took the silent girl in hand. “ You’re 
fearfully tired,” said Rhoda. 

Tamsin looked dazed. 

“ Now shake yourself a little, and come here to 
this wash-stand and get a few of the cinders out of 
your ears, and put on this sack. You don’t know 


^^BUT afterward:^ 


125 

how it will freshen you up. The private supper 
Mr. Sutton ordered will be served in our parlor 
pretty soon.” 

“ I ain’t hungry,” murmured Tamsin. 

Aren’t you ? I am, — ferociously.” Rhoda 
was unwrapping and doing her up in the dressing- 
sack while she talked. It was a cream-colored 
fabric, and instantly improved on the effect pro- 
duced by the poor bride’s scarlet waist. 

“Tamsin,” said Miss Jones positively, “you’re 
going to make a striking woman. I never saw 
any one change with clothes as you do. Oh, 
shan’t we have you looking delightful! You can 
have things a little bit nicer than most school- 
girls, on account of your position, and in a little 
while you will learn to demand this or that as your 
irreversible right. How adaptable human beings 
are ! Does this roar and tumult confuse you ?” 

“ I think it does, some.” 

“ Well, you’ll get over that, and love a city as 
much as I do.” 

“ I think I should like it.” 

“ Certainly. We’ll take a carriage and shop for 
dear life for you all this week.” 

The private supper was served up very soon. 
Craque-o’-Doom was so good a traveller that his 
short bridal trip had produced little effect on him. 
He was merry with Rhoda. Tamsin sat straight 
and frightened in her chair, picking up bits of 

II* 


126 


CRAQUE-a-DOOM, 


strange sumptuous food as if she could not hazard 
swallowing. The dwarf watched her with quick 
sweeping looks. 

“ She is very tired,” said Rhoda. “ All this ex- 
perience is so strange to her.” 

“You must both sleep late in the morning,” he 
replied. “ My man will arrive with the carriage 
some time to-night : he had a telegram ready for 
me here. The carriage will be at your disposal 
as soon as you want it.” 

“Oh,” exclaimed Miss Jones in ecstasy, “I am 
more than compensated for having to be content 
with a slim outfit when I get married. — Tamsin, 
the next time you do your spring shopping you 
will snub my memory, for I am going to be such 
a despot !” 

The dwarf bade them good-night when they 
rose to go back to their room. He got down 
from his chair and bowed to Rhoda. Then he 
took Tamsin's hand and kissed it. She stood like 
a statue. Rhoda saw the wistful, dog-like loyalty 
of his eyes as he lifted them to the slim-figured 
girl, but she did not observe any tremor run 
through that figure. “Is there anything — ” he 
inquired, hesitating to finish the sentence. “ Are 
you feeling well, my child?” 

“ Yes, sir,” replied the low voice. 

“ Tell me what it is,” he persisted. 

Rhoda withdrew and closed the door after her. 


BUT afterward: 


The dwarf drew his wife toward a chair. She 
sat down trembling, with one hand locked tight 
over the other. Her eyes were fixed on the floor; 
a full tear slid from each and coursed over her 
face. 

“ My little one,” said the man, with the anguish 
of a mother in his voice, “ are you wretched ? Oh, 
I cannot bear that ! I will go out of the hotel to 
some other place. You regret it, don’t you ?” He 
spoke this with a downward affirmative accent. 

“ No,” said Tamsin, hurriedly. She managed 
to raise her swimming eyes and encounter his. 

It’s Tillie.” 

With a cautious and delicate gesture he took up 
her right hand and began to smooth and pat it : 

Are you afraid she is ill ? You want your sister, 
poor child !” 

“ It’s strange being so far from Tillie,” she mur- 
mured, making her muscles tense in her efforts to 
regain composure. 

“ If I could bring her to you this instant you 
should have her. Don’t hate me for making you 
so lonely, will you ?” 

Tamsin looked down at the light-expanded face. 
Then her eyes sought the floor, and the flush 
under her skin appeared for an instant. She be- 
came quiet, and Craque-o’-Doom scarcely noticed 
that she made no reply to his appeal. “ I’ll send 
a telegram to Captain Mills,” he proposed, “ be- 


128 


CRAQUE-a-DOOM. 


fore I go to bed, and early to-morrow you can 
have news direct from Tillie. You go to bed and 
sleep soundly. Trust me to look after your happi- 
ness a little.” 

He led her to her room-door, and put her inside 
with another “ good-night.” It was she who was 
protected and led, though she towered above him so. 

Rhoda had already sat down to toast her slip- 
pers : she motioned Tamsin to draw to the hearth. 
Tamsin sat down. So wide was the gap between 
her present and past life that it did not seem 
strange to be sitting on terms of perfect equality 
with a woman who but a short time ago had 
seemed so far above her. 

“ That man is a gentleman, if there ever was one 
on this earth !” exclaimed Rhoda. Tamsin, 
you’re the luckiest girl I ever saw ; and the world 
has been perused by me considerably, my dear. I 
know it has hard, hideous, inhuman aspects which 
no amount of philosophy can gloss over. It very 
seldom turns out that Fortune is so kind to those 
thrown completely on her mercy. Mr. Sutton 
knows more than you or I can ever grasp ; yet see 
how modest he is. I do hope you’ll make him 
happy.” 

Tamsin sat with her hands locked. 

“Of course your first duty is to make the very 
most and best of your school advantages ; which 
I know you’ll do. And I want to give you a hint. 


^^BUT afterward: 


You’re so very quiet there’ll be plenty of girls who 
will try to run over you : don’t you allow it first 
or last. Assert yourself. With so many blessings, 
all you have to do is to hold your own. But at 
the same time, Tamsin, if you would try to make 
yourself popular, you know, — friendly among the 
girls, — you’ll get along much better, and it will be 
pleasanter for you than if you are too reserved. 
Well, I didn’t intend to give you a lecture. The 
position of duenna seems naturally to fit me,” 
Rhoda laughed and shifted her feet. When I 
started to boarding-school I was a skinny, shabby 
orphan ; my dresses were calico or cheap delaine ; 
these abundant locks were shingled close to my 
skull. I must have looked like a resolute death’s- 
head or a knowledge-smitten scarecrow. I taught 
some of the primary fry and let it go on my own 
tuition : this contributed to age me. When spring 
and commencement fever came, my agony was 
dreadful. Ah ! the poor little short stories I wrote 
at dead of night by a smoky lamp while my room- 
mate snored, the heart-beats with which I sent 
them off in hopes of raising cash for a cheap 
spring outfit, the despair with which I received 
half or two-thirds of them back and saw my out- 
fit dwindle to a pair of shoes and a hat !” Rhoda 
unloosened her hair and pulled it down around 
her half exultantly. “Slowly, slowly I had to 
conquer all these things. Even youth and passa- 


130 


CRAQUE-a-DOOM. 


ble good looks never came to me until I was more 
than twenty-five. Who was there except myseli 
to have a vital interest in my success or failure ? 
Nobody. That skinny waif might have died and 
only a few kind strangers would have moistened 
her with a tear. I think it has made me very prac- 
tical : I used to be no end of sentimental. But my 
Will has grown so it has to be spelled with a cap- 
ital W, and I have a confidence in myself which 
must seem dreadful to you. The world is all be- 
fore me now. At an age when most women 
are buried in family cares I shall go sailing into 
broader life a princess ; the way will expand, — ex- 
pand, — expand. But you, Tamsin, — see how much 
happier is your lot. In the dawn of your girlhood, 
just as you have begun to feel the edge of circum- 
stance and necessity, here comes a kind and pow- 
erful guardian, who will lift you over everything 
which hurt and hardened me, who will be sunshine 
and rain, earth and air, to bring you into blossom ; 
and he asks nothing but the privilege of taking 
care of you.” 

Tamsin got up and walked across the room. 
Rhoda turned to look after her : Am I worry- 

ing you, my dear? We must go to bed.” 

“ I heard you talking,” said Tamsin, wheeling 
and coming back, “the first evening at Mills’s.” 
She stretched her arms straight down before her 
with the fingers locked. Her face had an unusual 


BUT afterward: 


pallor which seemed the culmination of a paleness 
of several days’ growth. 

“ The first evening?” repeated Rhoda, puzzled. 
“ What was I saying ? Some nonsense to the 
girls, probably.” 

“ It was to them, — about getting married.” 

“ Oh !” said Rhoda, with a sensation like a sting, 
though that puzzled her also. “ Did I say any- 
thing which stayed in your mind afterward. Tarn- 
sin?” 

Yes.” 

“ Well, it wasn’t very silly, whatever it was. I 
will uphold my own tenets.” 

“ I thought at first — ” pursued Tamsin, hesitat- 
ing. Then she took another tack : “ It was about 
money.” 

“ Oh, yes ; I remember. Where were you ?” 

“ In the other room. And I sort of made up 
my mind. But afterward — ” She broke off there, 
as if there were no open communication between 
herself and Rhoda or what she had begun to say 
would not bear telling. 

“ Well, what afterward ? Upon my word ! is 
that you sobbing ?” Rhoda sprang up and ran to 
her as she turned her back. “ Tamsin, this will 
never do. You must get into bed this moment. 
Poor girl ! you are worn out with excitement and 
travel. In the morning it will be very different 
with you.” 


132 


CRA Q UE- a-D 0 OM. 


CHAPTER XV. 

“are you happier now?” 

In the morning it was very different with her. 
The wondrous advantages of her position began to 
unfold themselves to Tamsin. In the first place, 
with the very late breakfast came in a telegram 
from Captain Mills, stating that Tillie was evi- 
dently in better health than usual : she was at the 
Hill-house, while Tom telegraphed, showing with 
satisfaction a fine large doll Tamsin had left to 
console her. 

“Why, I didn’t leave her any doll !” murmured 
Tamsin to Rhoda. She was beaming with a new 
sense of power and conquest over time and space. 

“ Don’t you see he did it ?” exclaimed Rhoda 
between her sips of coffee. “ He got the biggest 
wax baby Barnet afforded, and had me send it to 
your mother in your name. I do adore considera- 
tion in little things : it’s much likelier to produce 
happiness than this everlasting silly cooing, ‘ Do 
you love me better than anybody else ?’ Give me 
the man who will look after my comfort and heart’s 
ease. Instead of talking vapor, people about to 
marry ought to attend to substance, and ask sen- 


YOU HAPPIER NOWr 


sibly, *Are you certain you can always support me 
in comfort?’ and, ‘ Do you require as much society 
as I do ?’ — ‘ What are your views about a wife’s 
regular allowance ?’ — ‘ Is your temper surly or 
quick ?’ — ' What do you like to eat ?’ and, ‘ How 
many poor relations have you that will expect 
assistance?’ A fair understanding on all such 
points will give the firmest of foundations for 
mutual good will.” 

Tamsin heard with a slight tinge under the skin, 
and Rhoda ceased suddenly, reflecting that the 
clause about poor relations was rather ill-timed. 
She was surprised that she did not get on to 
greater intimacy with Tamsin. Docile as the girl 
appeared, she was insulated behind a barrier which 
Rhoda could not pierce. 

When they dressed for their shopping-tour, 
Tamsin seemed passively grateful for the little ex- 
tra touches Rhoda bestowed upon her, but her reti- 
cence never quite disappeared. Before the day 
was over, however, an unusual exhilaration grew 
in her. 

“ Now, this is New York,” said Rhoda, as their 
coupe turned away frop the hotel. “ Isn’t it im- 
mense ? The roar and glory always raise me to 
the seventh heaven. You’ll have to find it all 
out by degrees. As you’re to go to school and 
have your future home in and about the city, I 
shan’t waste my breath describing things to you 
12 


CRAQUE-0''-D00M. 


134 

that you’ll soon know as well as I do. At pres- 
ent our interests lie in the direction of shopping ; 
and we can get anything under the sun in New 
York, and have I dare not say how many hun- 
dred dollars in this pocket to do it with. Oh, 
shan’t we be bowed to and worshipped to-day? 
Won’t the clerks run out with bundles to our 
carriage and hold the door open ? — the very 
wretches who have lorded it over me when I 
meekly purchased of them a few scant yards of 
cashmere.” 

As Rhoda had to buy material for her own out- 
fit as well as Tamsin’s, the task occupied them full 
a week. During this time, at the dwari’s urgent 
request. Miss Jones stayed at the hotel as one of 
his party, to be Tamsin’s companion, instead of 
returning to her boarding-house. Tamsin was 
gloved, booted, slippered ; women were constantly 
bringing her things to try on; she was driving out 
to be fitted ; and presently, as if by magic, she 
found herself in a dull bronze suit of silk so rich 
and soft the mere touch of it delighted her, with 
nothing to relieve the shade in hat, gloves, or wrap 
except a bunch of red roses close by her neck. 
She saw herself in one of the many mirrors with 
which the hotel increased and reflected its mag- 
nificence. Her black eyes scintillated in a face 
which was slowly to lose the dulness of its pallor 
and grow transparent. Hot baths, abundant food, 


YOU HAPPIER NOW r 135 

and exhilaration were changing her, and she recog- 
nized it when she saw herself dressed. 

Craque-o’-Doom drove with the girls, after the 
first fury of their shopping was over, and showed 
Tamsin wonders which she had never dreamed of 
in her previous life. Sometimes her mind reeled 
dizzily, — had she ever been that miserable girl in 
Barnet? — and again, in the midst of a keen de- 
light, a pang struck through her breast that she 
should enjoy so much while Tillie lived like a clod. 
She saw one play : this was a few evenings before 
she entered school and began the serious business 
of improvement. It was the dwarf’s good fortune 
to be able to present first to her imagination Neil- 
son’s matchless Juliet. They took a box. Craque- 
o’-Doom had never been able to meet the gaze of 
a large assembly of people in the body of the thea- 
tre. He sat behind the two girls, smiling to him- 
self at Tamsin’s quiet excitement. She had already 
a well-bred air. Rhoda had initiated her into some 
style of hair-dressing which made her head a 
pretty study. She looked back occasionally at 
Craque-o’-Doom, parting her lips with a smile at 
once timid and grateful. 

Are you a little happier now ?” he inquired. 

Yes,” replied Tamsin. She turned immedi- 
ately to watch the great curtain which still shut 
away from her an unknown world. The house 
was crowded; the gas-lights were multiplied by 


CJ^A Q UE- a -D 0 OM. 


136 

mirrors and prisms ; the perfume from her own 
drapery filled her with dreamy delight. How 
many beautiful and grand people there were in the 
world ! Rhoda saw acquaintances to whom she 
bowed. A little bell rang ; the orchestra, almost 
at her feet, startled her with a blare of music. 
What it was, and why they played it, she did not 
know, but it stormed her heart : she trembled with 
positive rapture. Then the great curtain began to 
rise. She watched that miracle until voices re- 
called her eyes, and, behold ! on the stage there 
were two women, — a lady and her servant, — 
dressed in some queer fashion which made both 
stately. And in a short time there came running 
in one of the loveliest women this earth has ever 
borne, whose crimson mouth seemed strangely 
made of ripples or scallops. The people made 
thunder with their hands, for this was Neilson. 
Tamsin now seemed to live in the body of this 
fair woman. She loved with her, despaired with 
her, hung over the morning balcony after her de- 
parting husband with her, and died and was laid in 
the Capulets’ tomb. She did not know it was over, 
and believed there must be a better ending, when 
Craque-o’-Doom was reaching to fold her wraps 
around her. She turned her swimming eyes to his. 

My dear !” he whispered. The crowd in the 
theatre was surging out, and one or two lights 
were shut off. “ We will read the play together 


YOU HAPPIER NOWr 137 

some time/^ he added more quietly. “ Has it 
made you feel unhappy?” 

“ No,” said Tamsin, “ not that. I’m glad I saw 
it.” She was not excited to chatter as they drove 
back to the hotel ; she did not say it was splendid 
or perfectly gorgeous : Tamsin always had more 
thoughts than words. 

Rhoda was heartily enthusiastic over the Juliet, 
but she had a great many absurd things to say 
about Capulet’s ball and the red-and-green ladies 
who danced the minuet in back ranks : “ The poor 
wretches always get themselves up in segments 
of glaring colors ; at the very best they look like 
figures heaped out of strawberry, pistache, and 
lemon ice-creams. Their trains don’t train right; 
and how insolent the star’s perfection seems, throw- 
ing their poor defects into such prominence ! A 
real poor stock actress or actor must have the sad- 
dest life on earth, — I mean one without any talent 
for rising. Imagine that tawdry flock going off 
the stage into the wings : they pick up their sorry 
trains ; no maid waits for them ; that thunder of 
applause is for the star. The public must seem a 
many-headed monster ; and the wind is so cold in 
the wings, the tackle and pulleys overhead so 
ghastly !” 

“ But, on the other hand, look at the triumph 
of such a Juliet,” said Craque-o’-Doom : “shew 
the actual moist flame that Shakespeare presents 
12* 


138 


CRA Q UE- O'-D O OM. 


to our imagination. We do not want to see her 
in any other shape.” 

“That’s just it: her one triumph is the defeat 
of a thousand others. And the world doesn’t care 
a straw for people who fail or make a sorry fight 
of it, in any place. Come to that, we’re all down- 
right savages at heart : whoever can get ahead of 
us becomes our idol and chief; whoever happens 
to fall underfoot we do not scruple to tramp on. 
If he doesn’t like it, he hasn’t any business to 
stay there.” 

“ Fortunately, you are not as fierce as your 
philosophy. Miss Rhoda.” 

“It isn’t my philosophy; it’s my observation: 
facts are facts.” 

Tamsin looked out of the window as their car- 
riage moved between two rows of gigantic build- 
ings. She was in a luxurious position : what 
Rhoda Jones said sounded like a painful truth 
which she had known in some former world. 

During all this time that Tamsin was being pre- 
pared for school, the school was being selected 
and prepared for her. To the lady-principal Tarn- 
sin’s position and characteristics were explained. 
It was considered best by all parties that she 
should enter school as Tamsin Sutton, a young 
girl under the care of a guardian, since she was 
nothing more, and it was neither necessary nor 


AJ?E YOU HAPPIER NOlVr 


advisable to explain her true relation to Mr. Sutton 
to a couple of hundred young ladies from all parts 
of the country. Tamsin herself was not likely to 
make confidences. 

“ Unless she falls desperately in love with some 
class-mate,” said Rhoda to Craque-o’-Doom, her 
reserve will be pierced by nobody. I think she 
likes me very much ; still, she has never poured 
any confidences into my ear.” 

The dwarf paled a very little : But there is no 
danger of that sort of thing. The pupils are all 
young ladies.” 

“ Oh, well, that’s what I mean, of course. Girls 
sometimes have desperate sentiments for each 
other, and bill and coo, and die of jealousy, and 
go through all the nonsense. I fell in love with 
the gymnastic teacher when I was at boarding- 
school. She was the homeliest and leanest French- 
woman you ever saw, and, as I was very miserable 
anyhow, I contrived to howl myself into quite a 
frenzy whenever I fell the least under her dis- 
pleasure. It’s in many young girls to take such 
morbid fancies ; and there’s really no great harm 
about it. It’s only their modest, roundabout way 
of worshipping man ; they are reprehended for 
thinking about him while at school, so they adore 
his reflected and refined image.” 

** I don’t think I should like it in this child’s 
case,” said Craque-o’-Doom. 


140 


CRAQUE-O'-DOOM. 


“ She mayn’t be of the doting sort at all. Some- 
times I think she is a person who will have only 
one or two strong affections in her life. But she’s 
so young yet : you can’t tell what she will be.” 


CHAPTER XVI. 

FURTHER ACQUAINTANCE. 

The day before Tamsin entered school, Craque- 
o’-Doom drove her out in the afternoon with no 
companion besides himself. He sat opposite to 
her in the coupe, glancing over her figure occa- 
sionally. She was his study. His expressive 
eyes brightened or gloomed when he fixed them 
on her. Wherever he was seated now, the Persian 
drapery trailed from his lap : once he had seen 
her look at his feet. 

Tamsin did not know where they were going. 
Each day of her life was now a new pleasure. 
She was about to enjoy something, and leaned 
back in quiet anticipation. 

“ Would you like to pick up a few little things 
for Tillie ?” he inquired. 

“For Tillie?” Radiance appeared to stream 
from her face and fall across his eyes. “ I wrote 


FURTHER ACQUAINTANCE. 


I4I 

her a letter,” she continued in a tremulous, eager 
way which was so confiding that the dwarfs heart 
swelled within him ; ” I told her how I was getting 
along. She would like it so much.” 

‘‘ I wish she could be with you. But the next 
best thing is to send her something. — Here!” 
Craque-o’-Doom signalled to his man to stop. — 
“ I believe this is a place where you can get made- 
up knick-knacks for little girls. Are you afraid to 
go in alone and buy ?” He took a porte-monnaie 
from his breast-pocket and transferred it to her 
hand. 

No ; Tamsin had grown bold during her shop- 
ping experience. She had been treated obse- 
quiously : what was there to be afraid of? Craque- 
o’-Doom waited for her in the carriage. She 
appreciated silently his kindness in letting her 
shop unassisted for Tillie. She knew what to 
buy. Presently the packages came pouring out, 
large and small, round and square. In due time 
came Tamsin herself, in a still, white transport 
of joy. 

” Have you got everything you want here ?” in- 
quired Craque-o’-Doom. 

“ Yes.” As they drove on she looked up at him 
and broke the paper at the corner of one package. 
” It’s a blue wool sack : it ties with a ribbon under 
her chin. I used to want one for her ; she takes 
cold so easy.” 


142 


CRAQUE-0'‘-D00M. 


Craque-o’-Doom admired the sack, and she went 
on unfolding every purchase, until the merchan- 
dise was piled all around them. There were dresses 
of various kinds, undergarments, hosiery, handker- 
chiefs, and even collarettes. 

‘‘ Tillie would look nice,” she continued, in an 
eager maternal tone, “ if she was dressed like the 
little girls at the hotel.” 

“Of course she would,” said Craque-o’-Doom. 
“ She looks nice anyhow.” 

Tamsin threw her eyes up at him with an abso- 
lute sparkling ; her lips trembled. “ You are good 
to me,” she said in a sort of explosive burst. 

“ Am I good to you ? I want to be, — God 
knows I do ! Tamsin, will you promise me one 
thing? Always tell me what is in your mind. 
Don’t keep any secret from me, will you, my 
child ?” 

She started, the color appearing under her skin, 
but it died away, and she replied steadily, “ No, 
sir ; I will tell you everything.” 

Craque-o’-Doom drew a long free breath. He 
looked over the confusion of dry-goods and paper. 
“People may think we are peddling,” said he; 
“ but no matter. Now, don’t you want shoes, and 
gloves, and millinery, and such things ? And then 
a fancy toy or two ?” 

“ I told her once,” pursued Tamsin in a confiden- 
tial strain which made his heart yearn over her, as 


FURTHER ACQUAINTANCE. 


143 


she smiled and refolded the blue sack, “ that when 
I got rich I’d give her fine shoes and everything 
that heart could wish ; but I never thought then — 
And a ’cordion! I told her I’d get her a ’cor- 
dion.” 

The dwarf leaned against his cushion as if sud- 
denly tired. Still, not one whit of interest de- 
parted from his smile. “ She must have them,” he 
said. But we shall have to take a much longer 
drive to find the accordion. We can have a box 
packed and started by express to Tillie this very 
evening.” 

Again the carriage was stopped, and again Tarn- 
sin ran across the sidewalk to make purchases. 
There was a girlish alertness and spring in her 
gait which Craque-o’-Doom did not fail to mark, 
yet he put one hand over his eyes and crouched 
back as if he were hurt. “ ‘ I told her when I got 
rich,’ ” he repeated. What’s going to become of 
me if she doesn’t grow to like me ? I expect too 
much.” 

Tamsin came out, followed by some delightful 
shoes. There was a high-laced pair for every day, 
and kid button boots for Sunday; also some soft 
slippers, — ” for when she don’t feel like going out- 
doors,” said Tamsin, — and substantial rubber boots : 
” I never saw such things before ; but the man said 
they would keep her from all damp, and she zvill 
run out in wet weather.” 


144 


C/^A Q UE- 0^-D 0 OM. 


“Would you like to get something for your 
mother and father?” inquired the dwarf. “ While 
we are about it, we can pick up something for 
them.” 

Tamsin considered ; her face grew heated. She 
cast a piteous look at him, and said, as if con- 
strained to speak so by her promise of confiding 
everything to him, “ Maybe we better, or they 
might take Tillie’s things from her.” 

“ They wouldn’t do that ?” 

Tamsin turned her head impressively from side 
to side. “ But you’ve give me so much,” she 
said. 

“ Very little, my dear. And, come to think of 
it, there is something I have neglected to give you, 
and which we must drive to Tiffany’s for this very 
afternoon. Miss Rhoda says a school-girl should 
not have a great deal of jewelry; but you were 
married without a ring, and I have not given you 
one yet.” 

He alighted from the carriage when they reached 
the gorgeous shop, and made his way with Tam- 
sin between passers-by. When people turned to 
stare at him and direct each other’s attention as to 
a rare spider or a painted savage who could not 
understand their language, he looked at Tamsin 
with a quick, jealous sweep of the eye : the effect 
on her was not discernible. 

She stood beside Craque-o’-Doom when he was 


FURTHER ACQUAINTANCE. 


145 

mounted upon a chair, and pored over the array 
of precious stones spread before them with a sen^ 
suous delight which he keenly noted : for the first 
time in her life the diamond threw its glamour over 
her eyes. She took her glove off, and he put a 
blazing stone on her finger; the red hand which 
recently was fit only for plunging into any rough 
use already showed a fairer surface. 

They drove home about dusk. Tamsin was in a 
gale of delighted excitement. She could not eat 
her dinner until all her purchases were fondled 
over again, the accordion especially commended 
to Rhoda’s notice, and the whole boxed and 
started on the road to Tillie. 

I never saw Tamsin in such rapture,” said 
Rhoda. 

“ She does seem happy,” said Craque-o’-Doom. 
He was sitting in a large chair, leaning his head 
upon his hand. His eyes were of a paler gray 
than usual, and looked bleached like ashes. 

■‘‘Now you be careful of that magnificent soli- 
taire,” impressed Rhoda, shaking a finger at Tam- 
sin. “ Two or three dozen girls will want to try 
it on or wear it a little while, or borrow it to 
receive a call in. I never lost any solitaires while 
I was at school, but I can foresee the danger of 
it. It’s something remarkable for a girl of your 
age to possess.” 

Tamsin held one hand in the other and looked 
G k 13 


CRAQUE-O'-DOOM. 


146 

at it ; her glance then moved to the turquoise on 
Rhoda’s finger. Little as she knew of precious 
stones, the difference was apparent to her. Her 
face filled with a triumph which was really arro- 
gant. “ A little while ago,” she said, punctuating 
her sentences with the pauses peculiar to herself, 
“ I hadn’t but one old dress.” 

“ Don’t !” exclaimed the dwarf, turning his head 
aside. 

Tamsin started. She turned her eyes upon him 
with a glance which Rhoda saw, but he did not. 


IS tall: 


147 


CHAPTER XVII. 

“he is tall.” 

When Tamsin disappeared within the walls of 
her boarding-school, Rhoda went over to Brook- 
lyn, and was so busy that she called only once or 
twice before her marriage. The first time she 
called, Tamsin looked depressed and tired. On 
the next occasion, however, she was found in good 
spirits, eagerly interested in her studies. She had 
been promoted in her classes : she was learning 
music and French. “ Isn’t it strange the French 
people talk that all the time?” said Tamsin. 
“ Mademoiselle got very mad at me because I 
thought it was funny they had the Testament 
printed in French.” She was girlish and com- 
municative. A shell comb was tipped in her hair 
behind one ear, giving her a coquettish look. The 
airs and blandishments of admiring school-mates 
had evidently been added to her own manner. 

“ Your position is perfectly pleasant and easy, 
isn’t it?” demanded Miss Jones, twining a lock of 
hair on the girl’s forehead with matronly touch. 

“ Oh, yes ! I am beginning algebra, and I can’t 
get it straight yet. Everything is nice : I feel like 
I had always been here.” 


148 


CRA Q UE- O'-D 0 OM. 


You are improving, I can sep. How often 
does Mr. Sutton come ?” 

“ Twice a week, regular.” 

“ Regularly,” amended Rhoda. 

“ Regularly,” accepted Tamsin without change 
or shade. “And then other times he takes me 
to ride. We go all through the Park on nice 
days.” 

“ Oh, you lucky girl, to have such life drop into 
your hands, when I had to slave for so many 
toughening years before my deliverer appeared ! 
But, Tamsin, we expect to sail next week.” 

“ Do you ? And are you going to have a big 
wedding ?” 

“ On the contrary, the ceremony will be very 
quietly performed at the house of a distant relative 
of mine in Buffalo. Mr. Burns lives in Buffalo ; he 
has only time to run up for me before the day set, 
or I would let you see him. I sent an invitation 
to Mr. Sutton, but he declined, for you and him- 
self both : he didn’t think it best to take you out 
of school.” 

Tamsin had looked half frightened. With a re- 
assured countenance she said, “I don’t want to 
see strange people yet.” 

Rhoda laughed : “ I don’t know what ordeal 
could be more trying than the strange people of a 
boarding-school. But you are used to the girls 
now,” 


HE IS tall: 


^^Yes, now I am. At first — ” she paused — “at 
first they whispered about me.“ 

“ Oh, that’s nothing. Did you snub a few of 
them, as I recommended?” 

“ I said something,” asserted Tamsin. She ex- 
amined Rhoda as if in doubt whether to lay the 
communication at her mercy or not. 

“ What did you say ?” 

“ There were some girls,” ventured Tamsin, 
“that always watched out of the windows when 
he came to take me riding, and they would cough 
and laugh.” 

“ Green with envy,” said Rhoda. 

“And when he came to call they would go 
through the reception-room with their music- 
books, when they didn’t practise there at all.” 

“ I know the breed,” remarked Rhoda. 

“ They put pictures in my books, — pictures 
without — Pictures that hadn’t any legs.” 

Rhoda curled her lip. 

“ They couldn’t find out if he was any relation : 
so one day before chapel services they sat just 
back of me and sang under their breath, — 

‘ Here sits Miss Tamsin Sutton, 

Who goes to ride with a button !’ 

And I just turned around,” said Tamsin sonorously, 
scowling as in past life she had scowled at Captain 
Mills’s high-minded negro, “ and looked square in 
13* 


CRAQUE-a-DOOM. 


150 

their faces. I said, ‘ You are the buttons. He’s 
tall ; he’s tall as the hills.’ ” 

Rhoda applauded with her palms. She drew in 
a quick breath and looked keenly at Craque-o’- 
Doom’s champion. The young girl’s face was 
filled with color, but she adjusted her hair with a 
nervous motion and changed the subject. During 
the rest of the interview she had an uneasy air, as 
if this confidential burst had surprised and discon- 
certed herself. 

When Rhoda parted from her at the door she 
kissed the ripening olive cheek : This is the first 
time I ever kissed you, Tamsin.” 

I know it.” 

“ And the last time I bestow a maiden lady’s 
caress on you : on the next occasion it will be a 
matron’s. Do you like to be kissed ?” 

I used to like to have Tillie.” 

Didn’t you ever kiss Mr. Sutton ?” 

The girl colored up to the soft rings of hair 
which she was learning to train over her forehead. 
Rhoda felt as if she had outraged the delicacy of 
a child, and went away provoked with herself. 

On the day Rhoda sailed, Craque-o’-Doom took 
Tamsin to the wharf to see her off. She told them 
a great deal about her wedding in a few minutes, 
and introduced Mr. Burns, a portly, cheerful, 
rather elderly gentleman, who was easily put out 
of breath and planted his hand on his hip to pant. 


HE IS tall: 


He seemed prepared for Craque-o’-Doom, but 
eyed him with covert curiosity. Several friends 
accompanied them, and a number of Rhoda’s city 
acquaintances were there. 

The mighty steamship was ready to part from 
her moorings ; Tamsin sat in her carriage shaken 
with admiring awe of it. She got down at the 
last minute to run to Rhoda again, where that 
animated young lady was divided between her 
clinging friends and her hastening spouse. She 
gave her hand for another last squeeze to Tamsin. 

“ I never thanked you,” said Tamsin without 
preface or explanation. “ I thank you now.” 

Mrs. Burns had this pleasant assurance to carry 
with her when she was wiping some moist emotion 
from her eyes as they steamed down the bay. 

Her husband stood at the rail beside her. 

Come, Rhoda,” said he, swelling his chest con- 
solingly. . 

“Oh, I ain’t doing anything but enjoying the 
luxurious sensation of having friends. There isn’t 
anything more delightful in this world than part- 
ing with your friends when you start on a long 
journey : it brings out all their good points ; they 
open their hearts more in a brief minute than they 
have done before in years, and, no matter how 
stupid you may have thought them, their interest 
in you endears them to that degree that you are 
ready to fall upon their bosoms, but are caught 


C/^A Q UE- a-D 0 OM. 


152 

away just in time to preserve the situation, — to 
sort of crystallize it, you know.” 

” Yes,” said Mr. Burns, smiling applause, as he 
always did at her sayings. 

“ Even little Tamsin expressed herself unusually. 
Don’t you think she’s rather pretty ? — the girl 
with black eyes and light hair who spoke to me 
last.” 

“Yes. The one you said was married to the 
dwarf. Oh, yes ! He’s a dreadful figure, though.” 

“But he’s wonderful. If I hadn’t seen him I 
shouldn’t believe there was such a person alive. 
He seems so knightly and upright : he is as gentle 
as a well-bred woman ; yet I haven’t any doubt 
there’s tremendous passionate force in him.” 

“Yes; that’s what you told me about him 
before. It’s a pity he’s such an unfortunate 
shape.” 

“ Now, see here,” said Rhoda, making the wind 
an excuse for hooking her forefinger through one 
of Mr. Burns’s button-holes : “ that man, and that 
girl he married to educate, have exercised me 
a great deal. I keep observing them, and some- 
times I actually believe they are in love with each 
other in ways wholly peculiar to themselves.” 

Mr. Burns humored the idea with a laugh. 
“ She can’t think much of that little dwarf,” he 
said. “ A woman wants a man of good appear- 
ance, — portly physique. Especially a pretty young 


HE IS tall: 


woman.” He looked at Rhoda, and she looked at 
him. 

“ If you are going to talk and look that way, 
everybody on board will know we are just mar- 
ried. Scowl a little bit, do ! I’ve thought it was 
foolish for brides to object to appear as brides, but 
it does make one feel silly.” 

While Navesink was disappearing from their 
eyes, the dwarf, who had left Tamsin at her school, 
was curled up behind his paper in an alcove of his 
hotel. He pulled down his moustache and gnawed 
at it. Some men near him, unconscious of his 
presence, were talking about him, and he had no 
choice but to hear what they said : 

“ That queer object you saw come into the ves- 
tibule a while ago ? Why, that’s Sutton, the 
dwarf. He has a pile of money. He always 
stops here, and he’s been in town quite a while. 
Seems to have picked up a pretty young girl 
somewhere and married her, and he’s got her at 
school up town, and stays here to hang around 
her.” 

“ Dotes on her, does he ?” 

“ I s’pose so.” 

“ She can’t dote on him particularly.” 

I don’t know about that : he’s very wealthy;” 

Both men laughed as they moved away. 

Craque-o’-Doom kept pulling down his mous- 
tache. ^^I am making a fool of myself,” he 


CRAQUE-a-DOOM. 


154 

whispered. “ If I persecute her by ^ hanging 
around/ she’ll grow to despise me. I’d better 
go up river to-morrow and see how things are 
getting on at home.” He decided to take the 
afternoon train, — the river was not yet open to 
navigation, — but he had time to see Tamsin in 
the morning. 

She came to the reception-room from a recita- 
tion. The dwarf was huddled on a sofa, his rug 
trailing to the floor. He had not slept very well, 
but if Tamsin noticed that he was pale she did 
not speak of it. After she gave him her hand, 
which he kissed, she sat down on a chair some 
distance away. Her eyes were sparkling. She 
fixed them on the floor, and then said steadily, 
“ Comment vous portez-vous, monsieur ?” 

Eh bien ! Good ! And are you getting on 
to the * carpenter’ and the ^ bread’ business, and 
* the sister-in-law of my brother,’ and the rest of 
it?” 

Tamsin passed over his sarcasm. “ I got a 
letter from Tillie,” she remarked. “That’s five. 
She make^Mary write them.” 

“And how is Tillie ?” 

“ She’s well. She sent you her very best re- 
spects, too.” 

“ Much obliged.” 

“ She did. And she likes the things so much.! 
She’s written two letters about the things.” 


HE IS TALL, 


** Never mind the things. Do you think so 
much of things, Tamsin ?” 

She looked at him and showed a distinct dimple 
at one corner of her mouth. She had been learn- 
ing to laugh. ‘‘Yes, I do love nice things. Why 
don’t you notice my apron ? I made it myself. 
All of them are getting to wear lace aprons in the 
morning. I made it out of some lace Miss Rhoda 
bought for me.” 

“ Do you want any pin-money now, — any money 
to spend for little necessaries, I mean ?” 

“ I have a great lot yet that you gave me when 
I first came here.” 

“You’re not an extravagant child at all. Well, 
when you want anything you must write me.” 

“ What for ? Can’t I tell you when I see you ?” 

“ I am going home, up the North River, this 
afternoon, and may not see you again for some 
time.” 

Tamsin twisted meshes in her lace apron. She 
had certainly thawed from her former Indian-like 
stoicism. “ I thought you would live here,” she 
observed. 

“ No ; I have only stayed to see you well accus- 
tomed to your new life. You are comfortable here, 
aren’t you ?” 

“ Yes, sir.” 

“ And you will write to me, and tell me how you 
get on, and about your daily life, won’t you ?” 


Q UE- O'-D 0 OM. 


156 

** I can’t write — a real pretty letter.” 

“ Any letter will be pretty to me. How often 
shall I write to you ?” 

She lifted her eyes and dropped them again 
shyly : “ I don’t know.” 

“ My child,” with a sting of pain in his tone, 
don’t you care to hear from me ?” 

Tamsin started and turned her face aside. 
When she did look at him, it was with reproach- 
ful eyes. 

“Forgive me!” exclaimed the dwarf. “You 
don’t know how I hate to leave you.” 

“ What makes you go, then ?” 

“ Because I ought to. Tamsin, come here to 
me, will you ?” 

She rose and walked slowly to his side. 

“ Will you stoop down where I can look in your 
eyes ?” 

She settled slowly on one knee. Her whole 
body was in a tremor. He put out his hand and 
tilted her head up. 

“ Don’t look down at the deformed part of me : 
look in my face. My little one, how lovely you 
are growing ! How old are you now ?” 

“ Seventeen next month.” 

' “ And I am in my thirties !” 

An unaccountable silence fell between them. 
He had taken his hand away from her head. He 
now put it reverently back, drew her a little nearer, 







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HE IS tall: 


and kissed her forehead. With a strong recoil 
Tamsin sprung up and flew from the room. 

The dwarf whitened even across his lips : “ My 
God ! And I have grown to love her with all my 
strength and life !” 

The clock could scarcely have marked three 
minutes’ interval when Tamsin came back cau- 
tiously, guilty-looking and flushed. But Craque- 
o’-Doom had already gone. She could do nothing 
but lock her hands and stare at the corner of the 
sofa where he had sat. 


14 


CRAQUE~a-DOOM, 


158 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

LETTERS. 

Craque-d -Doom to Tamsin. 

Cold Springs on Hudson, April 12. 

My Dear Child, — Pardon me for frightening 
you just as I came away. I am not very well 
accustomed to women : they have always seemed 
divine beings literally above my level, except the 
excellent Dutchwoman who, with her son, daughter, 
and husband, keeps the machinery of my house 
going. 

You notice I do not call it home, though it is 
the dearest spot in the world, and one made by 
Nature so picturesque that it seems new and wonder- 
ful every day in the year. There is no use telling 
you about the Highlands : you must see them for 
yourself The whole length of this river is dear to 
me. The homestead is a very old place ; part of 
it is built of stone and dates from the early days of 
New Amsterdam, which was the ancient name for 
New York. This is an inconvenient part, with 
queer windows, and doors that open at the top 
while they remain closed at the bottom, because 
they are sliced in two across the miijdle. Addi- 


LETTERS. 


159 

tions have been built at various times : my father 
built the last. Altogether, they make an irregular, 
towered, ivy-eaten, bay-windowed, pillared pile of 
house so big I feel lost like a mite in it. 

Pretty soon it will be fine enough to boat on the 
river. I have always rowed and yachted a great 
deal. The Drew” and “ Powell” — two fine 
steamers — will begin to make regular trips near 
your vacation-time. If you like to come up and 
bring some of your chums, the house may seem 
more like home. Any changes you would like to 
have made in the furniture I will attend to in good 
time. Enclosed is a diagram of the principal 
rooms, with a short description of their contents. 

Don’t, however, let me be selfish and rule your 
wishes. If you would like to go back to Ohio for 
the summer, tell me frankly. But perhaps they 
will let Tillie come and spend the summer with 
you. 

Yours as always, J. S. 

Tamsin to Craqiie-o' -Doom. 

At School, April 16. 

Dear Friend, — I got your letter. You are so 
kind to me that I lie awake to think about it. 
After you were gone I cried till I was nearly sick. 
Of course that was foolish, for you put me here to 
improve myself, and I am improving all the time. 
You must excuse me for not being able to write a 


1 5o Q UE- O'-DOOM. 

beautiful letter. I practise a great deal writing my 
exercises, but my hand trembles when I go to 
write to you, and will not let me do my very best. 
Some of my letters to Tillie look a good deal 
nicer. 

One of the girls and I have been reading Tenny- 
son’s “ Idyls of the King.” I like Enid best. She 
is a Boston girl (the one I am reading with, I 
mean), and knows a great deal. She says every 
minute of our time ought to be spent in progress- 
ing ; but we eat chocolate caramels when it isn’t 
our turn to read. We are taking a course in the 
poets as a rest from study. She says she adores 
Schiller (I think that’s the way to spell it), and we 
are going to read something by a man named 
Cjbaty or Gaiety, — I can’t remember which. There 
is a great deal to learn. I used to love to read at 
Captain Mills’s house, but I had no idea how many 
books there are in the world. 

I. got some new gloves for Easter; they are the 
color of very pale flag-lilies. The people in Bar- 
net didn’t do anything but color eggs on Easter. 
I used to color them with calico rags for Tillie. 
This Easter Sunday we went to church, and they 
had very beautiful music and flowers. Life seems 
very different to me from what it used to. 

Your house must be very nice. I don’t see how 
anything could be nicer. If Tillie could come too, 
I should love to see it. This girl that I go with 


LETTERS. 


l6l 


(Sarah Davidge) might like to come too. A good 
many of the others have not got what I call good 
manners. 

This is a long letter. 

Tamsin. 

P.S. — I wrote it over two or three times, but 
every time it gets blotted, or something. 

Craque-d -Doom to Tamsin. 

Cold Springs on Hudson, April 19. 

My Dearest Child, — Your pretty little letter 
did me a world of good. Why should you make 
excuses for a graceful hand and an original way 
of expressing yourself? I have it in my breast- 
pocket, with some English violets from the green- 
house shut in it. The very first letter you ever 
wrote me ! It was only too short. I wanted to 
hear more of your reading, and your young friend, 
the Easter eggs you used to color for Tillie,*and 
the pale Easter gloves you chose to feel the warmth 
of your innocent hands in devotion. 

My little one, I hated myself when I read that 
you had cried, — cried till you were nearly sick.’* 
I must have shocked you. I forgot myself, — or 
rather I thought only of myself. But let us not 
talk of it any more. In time I shall learn how best 
to make you understand what your happiness is to 
me. I send by express some books from the library 
/ 14* 


CRAQUE-O^-DOOM, 


162 

you may like to read. The Keats I read and marked 
long ago when I was a lonesome boy, before I knew 
you were in the world or would ever come to me. 
But I leave it as it was. Perhaps you had better 
not share this book with the Boston young lady. 

The hills are beginning to put on such an ex- 
quisite green ! Your vacation begins the first week 
in June ; it is now nearly May. There is more than 
a month to wait. I have considerable business to 
attend to : perhaps it will be necessary for me to 
run down to the city by the end of this week. As 
I have a regular arrangement with the Hudson 
River road in winter and the steamer-men in sum- 
mer to ship my carriage with myself every time I 
go down, I might call and take you to ride, unless 
something interferes. 

We have a good boat-house and several skiffs. 
I will have them overhauled at once, painted, and 
a pair of oars made especially for a lady to handle. 

Write to me so I can get your answer by the 
day after to-morrow. My business in New York 
is very pressing. 

Yours, 

Craque-o’-Doom. 

P.S. — Do you think that is a funny name? I 
gave it to myself when a boy, because it seemed 
appropriate that a little monster should have a 
little monstrous name. Would you mind calling 
me Craque-o’-Doom instead of “ Friend” ? 


LETTERS. 


163 


Note from Craque^o' -Doom to Tamsin. 

23 April, In the Carriage. 

My Dear Child, — I write this on a scrap from 
my note-book. Not receiving the early reply I 
craved, but having a half-hour to spare, I have 
called, but find you out. It is a disappointment to 
me. They told me you were very well. Thank 
God for that ! Please write to me as soon as you 
have time. 

Yours as always, 

Craque-o’-Doom. 

Tamsin to Craque-d-Doom. 

At School, April 22. 

Dear Craque-o’-Doom, — It is a funny name, 
but funny names are the nicest. I meant to write 
last evening, but it was reception-night, and of 
course I could not be let alone. Sarah Davidge 
had some friends coming to see her, and she would 
have me go with her. They always dance on 
reception-nights, because Madame says we must 
learn how to appear in society. I fixed Sarah 
Davidge’s hair like mine. She is a little near- 
sighted, but looks very smart. I like to see peo- 
ple hang eye-glasses around their necks. We 
wore our long black silk trains. Ever so many 
girls have wanted to try my ring on, but I never 
would let one of them touch it. It always looks 


CRAQUE-a-DOOM. 


164 

beautiful. I love beautiful things so much I have 
a perfect passion for them. Sarah’s friends were 
nice ; I danced with her cousin three times. Did 
you know I had learned how to waltz ? It is so 
easy ! I am in raptures when I waltz. Madame 
would not let me dance any more with Sarah’s 
cousin : she was very smooth and nice, but gave 
me a look, and I had to talk with some old ladies. 
I would love to get a chance some time to dance 
all I want to. I was crazy to learn : nobody ever 
knew how bad I’ve wanted to dance ; and the waltz 
is the cream of it all. In Barnet they had balls, 
but of course I never saw them. I saw Captain 
Mills’s cousin and Miss Latta waltz, and it seemed 
as if I must know how. 

You will think I am very frivolous. It is differ- 
ent with me from what it used to be, I feel so light 
and happy ; but I am trying to get on in all my 
studies. They seem to think I am smart here. It 
is not like Barnet. 

I will try to get this letter to you in time. 
Please call : we can have such a nice ride. I want 
to see you. 

Truly, 

Tamsin. 

P.S. — You didn’t say what day or what hour. 


LETTERS. 


165 


On a scrap of paper thrust into the same envelope, 

April 23. 

Oh, what do you think of me! I supposed I 
had mailed this letter, and here it lies among my 
writing-paper I And this afternoon I was out for 
the tiniest little bit with Sarah Davidge and the 
French teacher, because it was such a lovely day, 
and Saturday, and you came and went away while 
I was gone. I thought you would send me word 
just when you would be here. Why didn’t you ? 
I watched for you all day Friday. Shall I always 
be doing things that look ungrateful and mean? 
Now you won’t have time to come down again for 
ever so long, I know. I would like to put some- 
thing on the corner of the paper, but you might 
think it very silly. Besides, you must be very 
mad at me. 

Tamsin. 


Craque-d -Doom to Tamsin, 

Cold Springs on Hudson, April 25. 

My Dear Child, — Never mind: it was my 
fault; I should have telegraphed. No, I do not 
think I can come down again immediately : some 
time next month, perhaps. Besides making some 
spring repairs and improvements on the estate and 
keeping various business interests well in hand, I 


i66 


CRAQUE-O'-DOOM. 


have just been mapping out a course of hard read- 
ing for myself. You see, your industry has had 
its effect on me. 

But let me beg one thing of you, little one : 
never again, by word or look or deed, signify that 
you feel “ gratitude” toward me. It causes me ex- 
quisite torture. Consider my possessions yours 
by right, — as they are. 

It must indeed be delightful to waltz. I can 
understand the feeling you describe : I have it in 
my wrists, and my floor is the piano key-board. 
Since coming home, I have written a little piece 
of music for you : I tried to put in the song of a 
bird down in our orchard. The birds are nearly 
all here. Enclosed find a rough draft of it. I 
have had headache, which may account for my 
making a poorer-looking musical score than I 
usually pride myself on doing. Have you heard 
yet from Mrs. Burns ? 

Put that something ^‘on the corner of the paper,” 
my child. Why should I think anything you do 
silly? Did you not leave your beloved little 
sister and come bravely away with me, an almost 
entire stranger, submit yourself to my guidance, 
and enter a school of other strangers having no 
one but me, a queer, perhaps unwholesome, sort 
of man, to whom you could appeal for sympathy 
and home affection ? I am very glad you have 
made appreciative friends. Miss Davidge’s cousin 


LETTERS. 


167 

has my thanks — yes, my warm thanks — for giving 
you pleasure. If you would like to include your 
new acquaintances in the party for this summer, 
do so. 

But write me another little letter as soon as you 
can. No matter how busy I may be, they are so 
welcome. 

Yours, 

Craque-o’-Doom. 

Craque-d-Doom to Captain Mills, 

(A letter which was not sent.) 

Cold Springs on Hudson, May i. 

Dear Tom, — With the awful example before me 
of many unhappy wretches who have written con- 
fidential letters and afterward had them exposed 
to an amused public by death of the confidant or 
unforeseen circumstances, I am about to unload 
my soul upon you, and get in return the consola- 
tion that you told me so.” 

But it’s not going to turn out as you told me. 
You ought to see her now, Tom: there isn’t her 
match in the world. You would hardly believe 
two or three months could make such a difference. 
She’s all sorts of ways, — bewitching, grave, child- 
ish, womanly. It is delightful torture to watch 
her unfold. But she will never care for me. I 
went down to the city a few days ago to see her, 


CRAQUE-O^-DOOM. 


1 68 

— the errand was purely a pilgrimage to her, — and 
she was out. They told me in what direction she 
had gone, and I made my man drive miles on the 
chance of catching one glimpse of her face. You 
don’t know anything about it, Tom. 

And of course the young fellows will admire 
her. I think she regards me as if I were her 
father. God knows, no father ever carried a baby 
in his heart as I carry her. 

I’ve been trying to study hard and master this 
fever. Nothing of the sort ever happened to me 
before. I never gave rein to it. And I didn’t con- 
sider the danger of giving way to this. 

Tom, I’m going to send her out to Barnet for 
the summer. I had intended to bring her home 
with a lot of young friends to amuse her ; but I 
cannot stand it. My heart’s pretty nearly starved ; 
I should make a fool of myself. She’s too young 
to understand that I want her all to myself I 
didn’t know what the effect would be on me ; but 
if I had known, it would have been just the same. 
What I have to do, though, is to act merely as her 
kind guardian and keep my own feelings down. 
Tom, I want your aunt to take her in as a boarder 
while she’s in Barnet. Tknow the favor I ask, but 
she can’t stop down at that place where her people 
live. You don’t know how necessary beautiful 
surroundings are to her. She is devoted to her 
little sister. Do me the favor, Tom, and demand 


LETTERS. 


169 

anything of me you please. And, while she is 
there, guard her like the apple of your eye. My 
God ! what should I do if she were to be taken 
from me ? It will be torment to have her trusted 
to a railway-train. But she will get tired of me if 
I follow her around. I’m off for another strength- 
ening summer among the lakes. I’ve got to be a 
man. The principal of the school has strict orders 
to telegraph me if she has the slightest indispo- 
sition of any kind. I have one of the maid-ser- 
vants down there in my pay to yait on her with 
extra pains. 

You ought to see the pretty little letters she 
writes, Tom. No man ever will see them, but it 
might be a pleasure to any one to do so. I be- 
lieve I loved her the first minute her black eyes 
met mine. It ought to be enough for me if I can 
make up to her for the privations she suffered be- 
fore I found her. 

You were all wrong in your predictions. What- 
ever the tribe from which she sprung may be, she 
is delicate, sparkling, upright, beauty-loving. In 
fibre she is a lady ; in mind, a swift-moving, power- 
ful essence. But what is the use of going on like 
this to you f 

I hope you won’t forget, when that brother of 
hers comes out of his confinement, to do as I 
asked you to do for him. As he is young, and it 
was only petit — misdemeanor, a good start and a 

H IS 


CRAQUE-a-DOOM. 


170 

little encouragement may bring him up. He cer- 
tainly showed enterprise by getting into such a 
scrape. 

Please present my compliments to Mrs. Tea- 
garden, and, if you can, ease my bosom with an 
early reply. 

Yours affectionately, 

Craque-o’-Doom. 

Craque-d -Doom to Captain Mills. 

(The letter which was sent.) 

Cold Springs on Hudson, May i. 

Dear Tom, — I want to ask a great favor of you. 
Will you receive my wife into your house as a 
boarder during the summer ? I find I must have 
another Canadian bout, and, besides, it does not 
seem advisable to bring her home yet; and she 
wants to see her little sister. I know it is asking 
a great favor of your aunt and yourself : in return 
you may demand anything you wish of me. I 
shall feel so comfortable and safe about her if I 
know she is in the companionship of your ex- 
cellent aunt. And it will be impossible for her 
to stop with her people ; I couldn’t allow that. 
She is abundantly fulfilling the promise I saw in 
her. 

By the way, whenever that unfortunate fellow I 


LETTERS, 


171 

spoke to you about is set at liberty, be sure to 
notify me. A little lift may do wonders for him. 
Excuse brevity. You know I am always 
Heartily yours, 

Craque-o’-Doom. 

P.S. — How about Canada for you this summer ? 

Telegram from Captain Mills to Craque-d-Doom. 

Just starting for Denver. But it will be all right 
Send her. 


1/2 


CRAQUE-C-DOOM. 


CHAPTER XIX. 

RETURN OF A NATIVE. 

Tamsin came to Barnet early in June. Her trip 
was easy and delightful. Craque-o’-Doom him- 
self saw her put in a palace- car, from which she 
did not have to stir until she reached the junction 
of the Barnet road with the trunk line on which 
she travelled. The railway-people were feed to 
make her safety and comfort their particular study. 
Craque-o’-Doom had thought seriously of sending 
a maid with her; but the difficulty of finding a 
suitable person, and the disinclination of Tamsin 
herself to appear before her townspeople so at- 
tended, had caused him to give up the idea. 

They’d make fun of me,” said Tamsin. “They 
all remember how I used to look. And then there 

are father’s folks ” It was not necessary for 

her to explain the incongruity. 

“ I see,” said Craque-o’-Doom. He had delayed 
his own trip until she was safely started. Tom 
Mills was to meet her at the station and telegraph 
her arrival. 

She parted from him in the gayest spirits. She 
had come away from Barnet in storm and misery, 


RETURN OF A NATIVE. 


173 

like a prisoner, pitied in a way that galled her 
more than her proud nature would ever own ; she 
was going back like a princess, guarded and 
tended, covered with splendor, and having the 
prestige of a great reserve power. The sensitive 
deformed man told this to himself very minutely. 
He added that she was young and rebounding 
from the former heavy pressure on her life. And 
she was just out of school : there must be some- 
thing unwholesome and abnormal in any girl who 
would not be merry when just out of school. 

Still, her gay nods to him from the open car- 
window jarred him. He sat in the carriage some 
distance away: he dared not risk boarding the 
train or crossing the many tracks. Now he saw 
her, and now a thousand objects crowded between. 
He wished she had not looked so exhilarated, and 
was in torment lest some accident should happen 
before she reached even Philadelphia. She started 
just before sunset. He thought of the run across 
the mountains. When the train was actually gone, 
he drove away, his head sunk on his breast and 
his face drawn. Oh, to tower up among other 
men! If I had been a big animal and tyrannized 
over her a little, maybe she wouldn’t have lost 
sight of me so gayly. How easy it was to per- 
suade her to go away instead of coming to Cold 
Springs with me! Yet I didn’t give her any 
choice, either. I wrote that she might go to 

15* 


CRAQUE-O^-DOOM. 


m 

Barnet, for I felt obliged to take another rough 
Northern trip this summer. Miss Rhoda said she 
was likely to form but two or three strong attach- 
ments in her life.” 

He looked at the seat opposite him, — the car- 
riage, although of the coupe pattern, had been 
built to carry four, — and thought of her shopping 
for Tillie and her remarks about Sarah Davidge 
when driving to the train. 

“Are you disappointed at not bringing your 
chum to Cold Springs this June?” Craque-o’- 
Doom had inquired. 

“What chum?” said Tamsin. 

“This Miss Davidge you write to me about.” 
He knew every name her pen had traced. 

“ No. I don’t like her so very well.” 

“ Why, I thought you two were banded for 
mutual improvement?” 

Tamsin studied the toe of her boot. “ Sarah 
Davidge is a nice girl,” she conceded, “ but I don’t 
like to hear people always talking about belonging 
to a good family.” 

Craque-o’-Doom smiled under his moustache. 

Tamsin, still studying the toe of her boot, con- 
tinued : “ And it makes me mad to hear any one 
say folks out West are all heathens.” 

“ I am to understand, then, that you have had 
some slight disagreements with Miss Davidge ?” 

“ Oh, no : we’re good enough friends. I like 


RETURN OF A NATIVE. 


175 

her the best of any of the girls. She can’t help 
her airs.” 

It appeared that no strong attachment had been 
formed for Miss Davidge. 

But this summer,” muttered the lonely dwarf, 
will be a blooming season for her, — an impres- 
sionable May-time. Still, in Barnet she will not 
be thrown with anybody likely to attract her, un- 
less the Millses have extraordinary guests. But 
she is by nature a high and mighty aristocrat : I 
really think few people could please her. Tom 
must make faithful reports to me : I shan’t be able 
to stand it if he doesn’t.” 

Very different was the expression of Tamsin’s 
face when she arrived late in the pleasant afternoon 
at Barnet station ; she was the only passenger for 
that place. Captain Mills was on the platform ; 
at a little distance the Mills carriage waited, and 
by the captain’s side stood a gawky child craning 
her eager neck at all the car-windows. 

With a start of delight this child felt herself 
seized ; she recognized the soft touch before she 
could turn and see that a pretty young lady had 
descended from the last car instead of from the 
baggage-van, which Tillie thought as desirable a 
vehicle as any. The object which did come down 
from the baggage-van was a huge Saratoga trunk. 

Captain Mills touched his hat and took the 


CRAQUE-a-DOOM. 


176 

hand which Tamsin: gave him for an instant across 
Tillie’s shoulder. She gave him barely a glance ; 
there was such gladness in her face as she rocked 
the little sistef to and fro in their old way! The 
train glided off, and Neal, on his driver’s seat, rolled 
a'white eye at the pair; but Tamsin did not know 
it, or that Captain Mills wanted the check for her 
baggage. 

“ My ! ain’t you some 1” exclaimed Tillie when 
they had kissed. 

“ Why, you’ve grown taller !” said Tamsin. 

“ Course I have. Daddy says I grow like an 
evil weed.” Her coral expanse of lips and rows 
of little teeth glistened. 

“ You’ve been well all the time, haven’t you ?” 

Had a tech of aygur once, — that’s all. Oh, 
Tam, you do look so pretty !” 

‘‘ Do I ?” 

“ Yes, you do.” 

“I didn’t think j/ou'd he here to meet me.” 

“ I’d ’a come,” said Tillie, “ if Td had to foot it; 
but Tom Mills he told me I might git in and ride 
with him.” 

Tamsin looked up toward Captain Mills with an 
expression of gratitude, and he took the opportu- 
nity of asking for her check. She groped in her 
porte-monnaie for it, and reached it toward him 
with one arm while she held Tillie to her with the 
other. He went into the station. “ Are they all 


RETURN OF A NATIVE. 


177 

well down at father’s?” inquired the new-comer 
with sudden recollection. 

“Toler’ble. You knowed Sarah Jane and 
Arter’d got married, didn’t you ?” 

Sarah Jane and Arter!” Tamsin’s eyes di^ 
lated. • The corners of her mouth drew down with 
a scornful spasm. This facial comment was the 
only one she ever made upon this typical Cheno- 
worth match. Tillie understood, but it was all a 
matter of indifference to her. She took no care 
about the doings of her relatives, excepting this 
sister. “ When did they get married ?” inquired 
Tamsin. 

“ Well, it was a couple of weeks ago. I thought 
I wrote you about it; but I guess Mary took 
that letter down to her house and stuck it in 
the winder, and I forgot to put it in the post- 
office.” 

Tamsin looked somewhat graver : the scent of 
the old atmosphere had come to her nostrils. She 
shuddered as if it had been an odor of death. 

“ Ain’t ye glad to git back ?” said Tillie. 

“ I’m glad to have hold of you again, honey. 
But I don’t like Barnet.” 

“ Them’s better places where you’ve been ?” 

“ Oh, lovely places ! You’ve got on one of the 
dresses I sent. And the shoes : let me see your 
shoes.” 

Tillie exhibited her boot and a lank length of 


m 


CRAQUE-a-DOOM. 


178 

ankle : Yes, these is some of the things. Oh, 
but the ’cordion ! — that was the nicest !” 

“ Did you like it?” 

I guess I did ! Tam, I can play * Mary to the 
Saviour’s Tomb,’ and ‘ Greenville,’ and ‘ Father in 
a Promised Land,’ and * Pop goes the Weasel,’ and 
a whole lot o’ tunes, on it a’ready.” The eager 
quiver of the child’s body was checked as if by a 
galvanic jerk. She looked up at her senior, re- 
minded of what was proper to the occasion, and 
inquired agedly, “ How’s that man o’ yourn, any- 
how ?” 

Tamsin shook with laughter. 

There ain’t nothin’ funny in that, is there ?” 
urged Tillie. 

‘‘ Not very. He’s well, and sent his love to 
you.” 

“ I don’t believe,” observed Tillie, weighing the 
matter, ” that he’s half as mean as I thought he 
was at first. He’s a real good kind of a feller.” 

Captain Mills, having seen Tamsin^ trunk put 
into the daily baggage-wagon which ran to Barnet, 
now came up to help her into the carriage. She 
nodded slightly to Neal as she ascended the step. 
He made a most obsequious bow to her, but as he 
drove he did not fail to roll the whites of his eyes 
back at her occasionally. She had risen to the 
plane of grandeur which his race reveres, and was 
no longer a Chenoworth. Still, he could not rec- 


RETURN OF A NATIVE. 


179 

oncile himself to the change; and Tillie Cheno- 
worth sat beside this new lady : he disapproved of 
Tillie as strongly as ever. 

Captain Mills, who occupied the front seat with 
Neal, turned round and chatted with Tamsin. 
He was under some constraint, but that wore off. 
She looked ripe and girlish in her close-fitting 
travelling suit, and her former awe of him 3s a 
great man was gone: both these circumstances 
placed her at an advantage. He inquired about 
Craque-o’-Doom, and noticed the smoother modu- 
lations of her voice. He told her of some changes 
in Barnet, and meanwhile was carrying on a sepa- 
rate train of thought based on his observations of 
her. She did not appear the same person he had 
once identified as Tamsin Chenoworth. That a 
few months could make such changes was miracu- 
lous. Either he had never known the girl, or 
girls were capable of being rapidly made over. 
He had^expected her to put on exuberant airs in 
dress and manner and talk of nothing but our 
school” and “ the girls,” higher mathematics, and 
her most intimate friends among the “seniors.” 
Boarding-school young ladies always did so : no 
creatures on earth are more stuffed with a sense 
of their own importance. But she was not raw 
and rasping.: the change had struck through her 
entire nature. It might not be a disagreeable job 
to watch over her welfare, as he had promised 


CRAQUE^a-DOOM. 


i8o 

Craque-o’-Doom he would do, feeling at the time 
he was the best-natured victim that insinuating 
fellow ever took in. 

They drove along the pike, meeting the sunset 
face to face. Tamsin held up one gloved hand 
to shield her eyes. When they entered Barnet, 
how small the canal-bridge looked, how shabby 
the warehouses rising from the water-edge, how 
mean the stores, how pitiful the one or two blocks 
of brick pavement ! She noticed these things si- 
lently, bending her head with a mere smile when 
Captain Mills inquired if Barnet did not appear in- 
significant after New York. 

“ But as natives we ought to feel an attachment 
for Barnet,” said he. 

“ It looks best in summer,” she observed. The 
woods on its northwest quarter were glorious in foli- 
age. We’ll go to the woods to-morrow, Tillie.” 

“ Me and Mary’s young uns has been all over 
them woods since the hossy-boys was in blossom,” 
exclaimed Tillie. “ Oh, it’s pretty up the slope a 
ways ! Do you mind when you and me used to 
go elderberry-pickin’, Tam ?” 

“Yes, certainly I do, — along the canal.” 

“And we was ’fraid and hid ourselves in the 
bushes when boats went past, — ’fraid the boatmen 
’ud sass us. You wouldn’t be afraid now: would 
you ?” This was affirmed rather than asked. 

Captain Mills smiled. 


RETURN OF A NATIVE. i8i 

**Why wouldn’t I?” asked Tamsin. She held 
one of Tillie’s claws on her lap. 

The child, somewhat at a loss, looked deferen- 
tially at her and tried to explain : “ Oh, ’cause. 

You ain’t the same like you was then.” 

“ What is there different about me ?” 

“ Well, you ain’t ’fraid.” 

You think I’m very bold now?” 

“You’ve been away,” proceeded Tillie, clearing 
the matter up entirely, “ and learnt proper!' Tamsin 
and the captain laughed : even Neal grinned as he 
turned his horses toward the Hill-house. 

“ But I thought you’s cornin’ homer ex- 
claimed the child, gripping both hands around her 
sister’s arm, as she saw the carriage thus turn its 
back on the Chenoworth quarter. 

Tamsin took the arm away and put it around her. 
“ You are to stay up here with me,” she said, “ be- 
cause there is more room than at father’s. I shall 
be with you just as much. I will go there too. 
Mr. Sutton arranged it with Captain Mills. — Didn’t 
he. Captain Mills ?” 

“ That’s the understanding,” replied the host. 

“ And I told you in my letter.” 

Tillie readjusted facts in her mind. While thus 
occupied, it occurred to her, “ You don’t call him 
Tom Mills no more.” 

“ Of course not,” said Tamsin, reddening. 

“ You used to.” 

i6 


i 82 


CRA Q UE- O'-D O OM. 


I have learned not to take such liberties.” 

Don’t mention it,” said Tom Mills, smiling. 
He looked up toward the house. Tamsin was 
quite rosy. 

“ You says * father,’ too, instead o’ * daddy,’” ru- 
minated Tillie. Ain’t you goin’ to say * mammy’ 
and ^ daddy’ any more ?” 

“ I hope not.” 

“ Is it ’cause you’re too proud ?” 

I don’t think I’m any prouder than I always 
was.” 

*‘They said you’d git reel stuck-up. I don’t 
think you are, though. You’ve just learnt proper. 
My !” meditated Tillie, shaking her head, “ how 
proper you have learnt !” 

When they paused on the drive beside the Hill- 
house, Aunt Sally Teagarden, with a white kerchief 
tied hastily over her head, came out, a little flurried 
and unsettled in her manner. She did not know 
just how to receive her former handmaid, of whose 
new connection she disapproved while having the 
girl’s welfare at heart. The humdrum life at Bar- 
net had produced few changes : she was astounded 
to see coming out of the carriage such a refined, 
pretty creature. 

Why, Mrs — !” exclaimed Aunt Sally. ‘‘ Why, 
Miss — ! Why — !” There she checked herself, 
to stand in fine dignity and put forth the good old 
formula, “ How do you do ?” 


« YOUR WEDDIRP-EXPENSES: 


183 


CHAPTER XX. 

YOUR WEDDIN’-EXPENSES.” 

In a day’s time Aunt Sally had fallen into very 
pleasant relations with Tamsin, and existence at 
the Hill-house moved in its usual comfortable 
groove. Tillie sat at the tea-table, and slept with 
her sister in one of the spacious front guest-rooms. 
She accepted all changes with the heedless adapta- 
bility of childhood. 

The next morning, when they started down hill, 
she skipped beside Tamsin, delighted only to have 
her near, and certain that the neighbors and towns- 
people gazed because they were delighted too. In 
the back street there was a long gauntlet of hum- 
ble doors framing stolid women. Some nodded 
distantly in reply to Tamsin’s greeting and noted 
the style of her dress and extravagance of her 
parasol and low shoes; others disappeared just 
as she came by, and took refuge behind window- 
blinds, as if they could not stand such refulgent 
prosperity; while a few came out to their gates 
and shook hands stiffly, talking up to her in a 
way to make her feel they were just as good as 
she was, and that she had not been “well off” 


CRA Q UE- O'-D 0 OM. 


184 

such a very long time herself. These shades of 
social sentiment were lost on Tillie : she was pa- 
rading her sister. It occurred to her several times 
to call attention to the trappings Tamsin carried, 
but they were merely incidental in her eyes. 

“Ain’t this a pretty dress she’s got on, Mis’ 
Flowers !” exclaimed Tillie to a dishevelled 
woman who stood with her hands on her hips 
and several of her dirty buds around her. Tam- 
sin, while talking a moment to the mother, was 
recognizing for the first time the piggish comeli- 
ness there is about children who wallow. 

Tillie’s exuberance amused her, but it had a 
chilling effect on Mrs. Flowers. “ Balls’s girls 
has all got dresses somethin’ like that,” she ob- 
served. “ What fer goods is it ?” 

“ Silk,” replied Tillie, rubbing the fabric between 
her finger and thumb. — “ Ain’t it silk, Tamsie ?” 

“ Never mind,” said Tamsin. 

“ But ain’t it silk ?” 

“ I thought ’twas callyco,” said Mrs. Flowers ; 
“ the Agger’s like it.” 

At the Chenoworth gate a curious neighbor was 
talking with Sarah Jane beside a pail of water whii:h 
seemed destined to no further use in the world than 
reflecting stalks of flowering currant by the fence. 
The doors stood open : the premises were alert 
with a summer look. The front windows were 
heavy with vines, the dry walk bordered by prim- 


**YOUR WEDDIN^-EXPENSESy 185 

roses and four-o’clocks and all that old-fashioned 
treasury of flowers. 

Tamsin saw her mother hoeing in the garden ; 
the ancient cornstalks were gone, and lines of ten- 
der ones appeared in their places. 

“ I s’posed you’d be above cornin’ here^'* said 
Sarah Jane as the neighbor stood aside to let 
Tamsin enter the gate. It was a new neighbor, — 
one of the many floaters of the back street, — and 
Tamsin did not know her. 

The sisters took each other’s hands. It was a 
singular greeting, kindly indifference appearing on 
one side and suppressed resentment on the other. 

“ Is father in the garden, too ?” inquired Tamsin. 

‘‘ No ; he’s down town. One of Mary’s young 
uns can run and tell him you’re here.” 

“ Never mind. I can see him soon, anyhow. 
Where is Mary ?” 

“ She’s washin’ fer Mis’ Ewing to-day.” The 
neighbor took up her water-pail and moved away, 
while Sarah Jane walked beside her sister to the 
garden. 

It was Tillie who caught the old mother around 
tlfc waist and turned her remonstrating sun-bonnet 
toward Tamsin. 

My sakes alive !” complained Mrs. Cheno- 
worth ; if you don’t quit a-scarin’ me that way, 
Tillie, I’ll fetch you such a rap — Why, is that 
Tamsin? No, ’tain’t.” 

16* 


CRAQUE-0'’-DOOM. 


1 86 

“ Yes, it is, mother.” The daughter put her 
arms up and kissed the old mouth ; yet, in doing 
so, she was conscious of a blank and aching feel- 
ing in her bosom. 

Mrs. Chenoworth was not especially glad to see 
her. They seemed to be a race without emotions. 

Don’t step on that tater-hill,” she said, and set 
her sun-bonnet straight on her head. Well, we 
heard you got here last night. Come into the 
house.” They all wended their way thither. 

Everybody is well ?” inquired Tamsin. 

** Middlin’. How’s your man ?” 

“ Well, thank you.” 

They entered the low door, and when Mrs. 
Chenoworth had selected the particular split- 
bottomed chair she wished Tamsin to sit in, it 
occurred to her to remark, Sary Jane and Arter 
they’ve made a match.” 

So Tillie told me.” 

Sarah Jane put her apron to her eyes ; her face 
reddened violently. 

I hope you’ll be happy,” said Tamsin. 

“Oh, I’ll bet you do! — with a great big lazy 
hulk like him on my hands ! You could always 
have things your own way, and I may take up 
with your leavin’s.” 

Tamsin looked at her with mild compassion ; 
“You needn’t have married him.” 

“ I thought mebby he’d fetch in somethin’,” ex- 


« YOUR WEDDIN^-EXPENSESR 13 ^ 

plained Sarah Jane, crying ; “ but he ain’t done a 
lick o’ work since ; and when he has a job he 
won’t stick to it. And there’s that baby.” 

“ Where is it ?” • 

It’s asleep,” snapped Sarah Jane. I couldn’t 
git nobody to take it, and it a-hinderin’ me from 
doin’ any good for myself Arter he talked around 
and talked around till I went and had him ; and 
now what have I come to !” 

Mrs. Chenoworth drew a deep sigh. Every new 
complication in her family brought her greater 
resignation : it was the natural lot of woman to 
suffer. But she turned toward Tamsin with a 
strange look. Tamsin scarcely belonged to her. 
“ Things is different with you,” she said. 

“ Yes, they are different.” 

Tamsin felt a sudden thrill through her bosom 
as she spoke. She saw a bland, gray-eyed hea'd 
standing out on the air with no appendage of de- 
formed body. He had saved her from this misery 
of race, before which she could still only sit help- 
less. The fine aroma of his spirit came to her in 
his absence : he would have made the world dif- 
ferent to her even had he been poor. 

A tramping on the step and a shadow darkening 
the door caused her to look up and see her father 
The old man was grayer and more hairy ; he wore 
goggles over his eyes to protect them from sun- 
glare, and a coat so tattered and patched it was 


i88 


CRAQUE-O'-DOOM. 


hard to tell what color it had faded and degener- 
ated from. Tamsin knew of old her father’s tastes 
in raiment : no matter how many whole garments 
he had, he wore most and enjoyed himself best in 
tatters. He made rather a loud demonstration 
over her, and smacked her cheek with a kiss. 
John and George appeared also, and shook her 
glove with clumsy hands. 

While she talked with her family she kept look- 
ing round with the old astonishment at their ways 
and habits of thought, and that aversion toward 
them which had been born in her was only tem- 
pered by pity. She did not like them ; formerly 
she had loathed them. The feeling was lessened, 
— not because they had gained upon her affections, 
but because she had a scope and a world no longer 
bound by them. 

With Tillie all to herself in the woods it was 
different. The summer was young with them. 
Every smell was pungent: the earth and grass 
still had an odor that one sucked in with all one’s 
lungs. Both girls knew a hollow in the woody 
hill which rose west of Barnet. Tillie carried her 
instrument, and they went there and sat on a log 
so crusted with moss and reduced from fibre by 
Nature’s alchemy that it was scarcely stronger 
than a heap of dust and gave way in places to the 
treading foot or leaning hand. It was a bank of 
many tiny moss-cups. Tamsin and Tillie had sat 


“ YOUR WEDDIN'-EXPENSES: 


189 

on that log every summer for years. The woods 
dimmed the daylight all around them. Far off 
they could hear the rumble of vehicles on the 
pike. 

When Tamsin settled herself, the little one 
kicked a space clear of last year’s leaves, and, 
patting the turf with her feet, played all her tunes. 
The tree-trunks echoed the music. When she 
finally placed the accordion on the log and climbed 
up between it and Tamsin, her face was damp 
with exertion, and she lifted the bottom of her 
dress to wipe her neck. 

“ What a smart little girl I’ve got !” said the 
elder, putting her arms around the child. 

“I learnt ’em nearly all myself. Just ketched 
^em by ear.” 

“ When you come to stay with me you can have 
a piano to play on.” 

“ That’d be pretty nice,” conceded Tillie ; “ but I 
don’t see how a feller can help likin’ the ’cordion 
best. It’s so little: you can carry it round and 
hug it. Gne of Mary’s young uns come nigh 
pickin’ a hole in it. My ! what’d I done with that 
young un if it had !” 

“ Honey — ” began Tamsin. 

”I like to hear that!” exclaimed the child; 
sounds like you used to talk. I expect my talk 
does seem awful to you, Tam.” 

“ I never found any fault with you, dear.” 


190 


CRAQUE-a-DOOM. 


“ I know you don’t ; but you’ve learnt proper 
and I ain’t. I’m goin’ to begin to, though.” 

Tamsin laughed and rocked the flaxen head. 
“ We’re sisters,” she said, — “ real sisters.” 

Tillie admitted it as they rocked. ** Mary and 
Sary Jane’s sisters, too,” she added. I like Mary 
better’n I do Sary Jane ; but I don’t like nobody 
half as well as I do you, Tam, — daddy nor mammy, 
nor nobody.” (” Father nor mother,” she tried 
under her breath.) “ Not father, nor mother, nor 
nobody. I did miss you so. Now, don’t you 
laugh if I tell you somethin’, will ye ?” She tilted 
her head and challengech Tamsin with her light- 
blue eyes : the iris was very clear and pure. 

” Of course not,” promised Tamsin. 

“ I did feel that bad, and I’d wake up in the 
night and couldn’t go to sleep, when you first 
went away. The only thing that done me any 
good was. I’d pat my piller, this way, like it was 
your face, and say, ‘ Place hands, place hands !’ ” 
This was Tillie’s individual and peculiar caress. 
She meant by it blessing and benediction. 

Tamsin suddenly put her handkerchief to her face. 

You ain’t laughin’, are you ?” 

“ Oh, no.” 

“ Are ye cryin’ ? Don’t cry, Tam.” 

Oh, honey,” said Tamsin, devouring this merry 
little face with eyes which dilated while she gazed, 
“ what shall I ever do without you ?” 














*‘VOUR WEDDIN^-EXPENSESR jgi 

** There's your man,” suggested Tillie. ‘‘You 
think a heap of him, don’t you ?” 

The warmth deepened under Tamsin’s skin. 
She looked wistfully at the child, but made no 
reply. 

“ I don’t think much o’ men. I don’t never in- 
tend to git married. Mary and Sary Jane has got 
their come-uppance gittin’ married. And you’ve 
got such a funny-lookin’ man, Tam.” 

‘‘You don’t know him, dear. If you saw how 
kind and fine he is — ” 

“Yes, he is a reel clever feller. I think con- 
sider’ble of that ’cordion.” 

“And didn’t you like the dresses and all the 
rest?” 

“ Yes, I was very well pleased. And I like the 
new things you brought me when you come. 
But I was spited about that blue sack.” 

“ Why, I thought you were pleased with it.” 

“ I was, I tell ye. But Mary she had to borry 
it for one of her young uns, and she kep’ a-borryin’ 
it till they had it there all the time. I didn’t min’ 
her havin’ whatever else she wanted ; but that blue 
sack, — it was a spite for // to be took.” 

“ I’ll get you another, — a prettier one.” 

“ If you do,” advised Tillie sagely, “ git one 
apiece for all the connections first.” 

Coming home, they passed Mary’s house. She 
lived in what was known as the “ nigger quarters,” 


CRAQUE-a-DOOM. 


192 

several colored families holding sway thereabouts. 
The voices of their noisy progeny could always be 
heard, singing, crying, or quarrelling, — but their 
gardens w'ere marvellous, even in pastoral Barnet. 

Tamsin and Tillie stopped at Mary’s fence. She 
was weeding her onion-bed, but came forward, 
pulling down her sleeves. Her hands had that 
shrunken look which parboiling in soap-suds 
gives ; her dress hung lank about her, and half 
the slats were out of the limpest sun-bonnet that 
ever hung over a dejected woman’s face. Still, 
and in spite of her humiliations and incapacities, 
there was always a remnant of dignity about 
Mary. Tamsin took her hands and reached over 
the fence to kiss her, touched by this sister as she 
had never been before. 

“ How are you ?” 

“Tol’able, thank you. You look real well.” 

I am well. Where are the children ?” 

“ Some’s along where he’s a-ditchin’, and I don’t 
know where the boys are. That’s Jinnie hidin’ 
behind the ker’n’-bushes. — Come here, Jinnie, and 
see Aunt Tamsin.” 

** Yes, come,” called Tamsin. But the white- 
headed child merely peeped, and refused to appear. 

Tamsin looked over her sister’s drawn and 
pinched face, still keeping a hand on her arm 
as both of them leaned on the fence. ‘^You’re 
tired, aren’t you, Mary ?” 


“ YOUR wedding-expenses: 


193 


“Yes: r been washin’ for Mis’ Ewin’. I just 
got done a little while ago, and thought I could 
weed some before he wanted his supper.” She 
avoided Tamsin’s eyes, and gazed rather on her 
hands or dress or Tillie’s clothing, with that ner- 
vous attempt at self-possession which is so painful 
to see in a woman who carries her broken pride 
through her misfortunes. 

“ I am coming to see you some afternoon,” said 
Tamsin. 

“ Do,” said Mary stiffly. “You’re goin’ to stay 
up at Mills’s, ain’t you ? We heard you was.” 

“ Yes : Mr. Sutton got them to board me.” 

“ I thought ’twasn’t likely he’d want you to stay 
at daddy’s, where they’re so crowded.” 

Tamsin decided that Mary had some sense, and 
in this respect differed from Sarah Jane. 

“ If you want to talk proper, Mary,” expostulated 
Tillie, “ don’t say ‘ daddy’ : it’s * father.’ Tam says 
‘father.’ ” 

Mary’s face grew hot, but she replied, “ My 
proper days is past, Tillie. I ain’t tryin’ no more. 
Tamsin’ll have to learn for the whole family.” 

“ Tillie will make everybody laugh at me,” ex- 
postulated Tamsin. “ She asked Mrs. Flowers to 
look at my dress, and she acts as if I came out for 
a show. That isn’t proper, honey.” 

“ Well,” said Tillie, twisting herself, “ you can’t 
expect me to learn everything proper right off.” 

I « 17 




CRAQUE-G'-DOOM. 


194 

The very first ripe currants were on the tea-table 
at the Hill-house. Neal stood by the sideboard, 
in his old place, ready to start at a motion from 
his mistress ; but, before it was time to change 
plates in the simple country tea, he had an oppor- 
tunity to ruminate long and deeply on the promo- 
tion of Chenoworth’s Damsel. He saw her sitting 
up there as fresh as a rose, acting the lady ; a few 
months before she was an odd-job girl, whose po- 
sition he considered far less dignified than that of 
a regular servant. His master looked at her, too, 
seeing with constant surprise her many small 
stylish ways. Her flesh had a warm under-tint 
which it had lacked in her days of precarious 
side-meat. 

When Tamsin had been home a few days, old 
Mr. Chenoworth came slouching up to the Hill- 
house one morning, looking about him in every 
direction, with his lips drooping apart. The cook 
happened to be in the garden with Aunt Sally, 
and Neal busy on the vineyard slope, so there 
was nobody about the great drowsing house ex- 
cept Tamsin and Captain Mills. The latter had 
just come in and thrown himself on a sofa in the 
back parlor. Tamsin was in the library, writing a 
letter. 

The old man went cautiously around the house, 
and, returning to the side-porch on the east side, 
stepped up and knocked. Tamsin saw him through 


“ YOUR WEDDIN'-EXPENSESr 

a window. The door was open, and she reached 
it before Captain Mills had lifted his drowsy 
length. 

“ Won’t you come in, father?” 

“ I hain’t got time. I wanted to speak to ye a 
minute.” 

” Is Tillie sick ?” 

“ No. She ain’t been from here more’n half an 
hour. I’ve got to go over to Norwalk to-morrow, 
— there’s some things for me to settle over there. 
I want you to lend me five or ten dollars.” 

“ Yes,” said Tamsin. 

He had spoken low, and Captain Mills’s indiffer- 
ent ear did not make out the request. Tamsin 
went to her room and brought him what he asked 
for. It was money given to her to spend as she 
pleased. She smiled as she came down-stairs : 
history was repeating itself, — he still wanted her 
wages. 

I’ll give it back as soon as I git it,” he prom- 
ised. 

“ Oh, never mind, father.” 

At least four times during the summer he made 
excursions to Norwalk, and each time borrowed a 
similar sum. Since he could no longer charge up 
board and lodging against her, he had no resource 
but to borrow. When the season was quite over, 
it may be mentioned here, old Mr. Chenoworth 
fully cancelled these loans. He saw Tamsin, and 


igS CRAQUE-a-DOOM. 

said to her, Tam, that money that I got of 
you — ” 

“ Never mind it, father. It’s all Mr. Sutton’s, 
and he would want you to keep it.” 

“ But I borrowed it. I’ll let it go against your 
weddin’-expenses. That was some expense, but I 
didn’t charge it up agin you at the time.” 

When she came in from the veranda on this first 
occasion, Captain Mills, lounging against the sofa- 
pillow, inquired, “ Was that your father ?” 

‘‘Yes: he’s gone now.” 

Tom had guessed her errand up-stairs. “ Did 
you know that your husband pays him a regular 
allowance ?” 

“ No,” said Tamsin with a start. 


A BROTHER, 


197 


CHAPTER XXL 

A BROTHER. 

The ladies of Barnet, especially the young and 
recently-married ladies, all called on Tamsin. 
They had considered the matter well. It was a 
concession not so much to her altered prospects as 
to the Mills family, with whom she was staying. 
The Millses had been respectable ever since Barnet 
was a town : they had been looked up to, and 
would probably be looked up to while time en- 
dured. Tamsin had made a queer though ad- 
vantageous match. She might prosper, or her 
new-found glories might melt: Barnet knew 
nothing about that, but as long as the Millses 
countenanced her advancement it was bound to 
do so. 

The young ladies compared their impressions of 
her: they had known absolutely nothing of her in 
her former state except an old shawl and a pair 
of cowhide shoes plodding across the commons. 
Their opinions of her were various: one was 
charmed with her, but another despised a girl who 
would live in comfort and even luxury while her 
family struggled in poverty. How Tamsin was to 
17* 


CRAQUE-a-DOOM. 


198 

renovate the whole Chenoworth tribe this right- 
minded critic did not suggest. Some thought she 
made herself ridiculous, coming back where her 
miserable origin was known ; and a few said she 
was a Chenoworth, and, generally speaking, that 
was enough for them to know. Still, outward 
deference of manner was not wanting, and Aunt 
Sally many times during the summer put on her 
cream-colored poplin, which gave her the stately 
expansiveness of a beautiful white elephant, and 
went with Tamsin hither and thither to tea at 
houses the outside of which had formerly been 
as awful as temples to Chenoworth’s daughter, 
Sarah Jane stood at the gate to watch her favored 
sister’s progress, or had spies out along the pike 
to report where Tamsin had been most recently 
honored, and Sarah Jane’s sun-bonnet made fre- 
quent journeys across the dog-pound to buzz at 
Mary’s tired ear the inequality of fortune. Mary 
expected no more good in the world : she had 
long ago received her final surprise. But Sarah 
Jane was of opinion that if Tamsin Chenoworth 
was even the ghost of a sister she would divide 
the dwarf up in some way among the family, or 
make him at least demand that invitations should 
be extended to all the younger branches. 

In return for all this entertainment Aunt Sally 
gave a mighty and solemn tea, to which all of fe- 
male Barnet drew nigh who were considered within 


A BROTHER. 


199 


the pale of society. And here was crowning cause 
for complaint. Sarah Jane went up and sat in the 
Mills’s kitchen and complained to the cook. Her 
feelings were so outraged she wished a variety of 
calamities upon her sister. That Tamsin had not 
the inviting of the guests was a fact which in no 
wise mollified her ; that Tamsin might be wearied 
by their society was what Sarah Jane could not 
conceive of. There sat that girl, reared like a god- 
dess above her own kin : either she had no busi- 
ness in her position or the Chenoworths had no 
business in theirs. Sarah Jane was in the liveliest 
sense a communist. 

Craque-o’-Doom’s letters were very odd and de- 
lightful. He wrote about nothing but his adven- 
tures. He enclosed some epistles from Rhoda 
Burns, written to Tamsin and himself both : she 
had a great many clever things to say about things 
abroad ; and these two remote streams flowed 
through Tamsin’s mind, clearing it of a great deal 
of perplexity. Considering herself only a simple 
girl, she sometimes pored over her husband’s let- 
ters with awe. 

Jennie Mills and Louise Latta,.with a following 
of young gentlemen and young ladies, came down 
and took the house by storm. These were days 
of immense activity, although the July heats were 
come. There was a lawn-party, and endless games 
of croquet, rides, a little languid dancing, and a 


200 


CRAQUE-O'-DOOM. 


picnic, in which Barnet turned out all its muslin 
and best cake and came home soaked with the 
usual thunder-shower. It was about this time that 
Captain Mills began to devote himself to Tamsin. 
He had been very kind to her all summer, in a 
guardian-like way ; but, with so many young men 
around, he felt it his duty, as the elderly, non- 
marrying man of the flock, to escort Craque-o’- 
Doom’s young wife. The young men in round 
coats and straw hats were not inclined to neglect 
her; they had heard her story from Jennie and 
Louise ; they saw her and approved of her. But 
on every occasion when a straw hat threw itself 
down to fan a pleasant heated face by Tamsin’s 
side, Tom Mills’s cooler, smooth-shaven counte- 
nance appeared as a balance of power. 

Jennie and Louise met Tamsin upon their own 
plane. They were delighted with her, and bor- 
rowed half her things, freely bestowing their own 
upon her in return. This house-stirring had a 
beneficent influence on her. All her girlish spirits 
were aroused. She talked, and waltzed, and played 
croquet. Tom Mills frequently stood and looked 
at her. Her very flesh quivered with life: she 
was lovely and dangerous, — far more so than the 
lighter girls : they could charm, but she had an in- 
dividuality which could entangle itself in the mi- 
nutest fibres of a man’s nature. Captain Tom 
thought this dumbly, feeling a sample of the tingle 


A BROTHER. 


201 


himself. It caused him to mutter again, “ Poor 
Craque-o’-Doom !” and thereafter lose himself in 
astonishment at the change which had come over 
his compassion for his friend. On the occasion of 
the dwarf’s marriage he had pitied the poor fellow 
for having taken a wife immeasurably beneath him: 
he pitied the same man now for the disadvantages 
which must hold him forever beneath this beauti- 
ful wife. 

It troubled Tom after the boys and girls were 
gone. He smoked a great many cigars. He was 
a hardened old bachelor himself, but could foresee 
how it would end. By the time she was through 
school she would be ready for gay society, and 
gay society she would have. No dwarf could 
deny her anything. How she would sail and 
sparkle, while Craque-o’-Doom ambled slowly 
along underneath, watching her flight ! Just when 
she was at her best, somebody, — Tom dreaded to 
think there were such scoundrels, — but some fellow 
would sever the last thread that bound her to 
Craque-o’-Doom ; then these new-fangled notions 
about divorce, and all that sort of thing ; darkness, 
trouble, Craque-o’-Doom desolated. 

But she seemed very happy at receiving the 
dwarf’s letters ; she read bits of them to Tillie, 
who hung around her constantly, and to Captain 
Tom. She devoted certain days to writing, and 
sent out large packets. 


202 


CRAQUE-a-DOOM. 


“ Distance lends enchantment,” thought the 
captain. 

Her brother came home from jail, and made the 
round of the family to greet everybody. He had 
not a prepossessing countenance, and was much 
soured against society. The poor boy knew that 
things had gone against him, and, conscious of 
guilt, he was ready for new mischief. Tamsin had 
seen Sam : she had exchanged salutations with all 
her cousins, including Arter, who shambled out 
of her way as quickly as he possibly could, ex- 
pressing injury in every line of his slouch. She 
had sought them more than they had sought her, 
though she felt an indifference toward them which 
was tinctured with no feeling but pain. But Jess 
came defiantly to see her. He slammed Mills's 
front gate. Sarah Jane was with him, — and the 
least liberal guardian of Barnet society was just 
leaving the house. It was a sultry sunset. Tam- 
sin was languid with the heat of the day. Aunt 
Sally stood in the shade, talking with her neigh- 
bor, and Captain Mills had just sauntered up with 
his cigar. He had on a dressing-gown, and looked 
effeminate in the eyes of Jess Chenoworth. 

Here’s your brother come to see you,” said 
Sarah Jane aggressively to Tamsin. ” He’s just 
as good as them that’s so big-feelin’, if he has been 
in jail.” 

The neighbor looked upon this family group 


A BROTHER. 


203 

with extreme disfavor. She confined her remain- 
ing remarks to Aunt Sally, and, after listening inci- 
dentally to what the group said, went away and 
told how disgraceful it was. 

Tamsin took Jess’s hand and said, “ How do 
you do ?” She looked pained. Tom Mills ached 
at the sight of her face. 

“ I didn’t suppose you’d come to see me, so I 
thought I’d come to see you,” said Jess, with a 
hard laugh and an air of braving it out. Yet she 
had a certain effect upon him which no female 
relative had produced before. 

You ought to come,” said Tamsin. “I ought 
to see you.” 

“ He’s your own brother,” repeated Sarah Jane, 
as if she were thrusting the fact down Tamsin’s 
throat. 

“Yes, he is,” .said Tamsin. “Poor boy!” she 
added, with a choke in her voice. 

“ I don’t want no water-works turned on,” said 
Jess, with an airy wave of his head. “ The women,” 
he remarked to Captain Mills, “ al’ays takes every 
excuse they can for cryin’.” 

“ I want to talk with you, Jess,” said Tom Mills, 
turning to saunter around the house and indicating 
that he wished to be followed, “ about your pros- 
pects.” 

Jess went with the captain. “ I hain’t got any 
prospecks,” said he in a jocose tone. “The’ 


204 CRAQUE-O-^-DOOM. 

hain’t any millionaire been runnin’ after me since 
I come out.” 

There’s a man, not exactly a millionaire, but 
still with some means,” said Tom, as they mounted 
the east veranda by themselves, who offers to 
give you a handsome start, for the sake of your 
sister, if you will try to make a man of yourself.” 

Tamsin sat on the door-step in silence. Aunt 
Sally had gone to oversee the milking. The sun 
was down, but the burning was not yet drawn out 
of the day. Sarah Jane sat on the lowest step : 
her sun-bonnet was in her lap, but her aquiline 
face was overhung with shreds of hair. Tamsin 
never said much to her, but seemed to overwhelm 
her with silence. Sarah Jane had broken out for 
a minute or two with hysterical complaints, but 
the black-eyed sphinx upon the top step was ap- 
parently stone-cold and deaf to them. “ You don’t 
seem to think nothin’ of your owm folks,” said 
Sarah Jane ; everybody else is more account to 
you than them that’s kin, — only Tillie. You don’t 
act with no natural feelin’s.” 

The upbraiding might have passed Tamsin’s 
cheeks like the evening wind. Her hands were 
folded in her lap, and she looked steadily down 
the hill. 

Sarah Jane dug her shoe into the gravel at the 
foot of the step. Dusk sifted thicker and thicker 
through the air, and finally Jess came round the 


A BROTHER. 


205 

house, and the sister who had come with him got 
up and joined him. “ Good-evenin’, Tam,” said 
Sarah Jane with asperity. 

“ Good-evening,” responded Tamsin. 

Jess paused, with his hat pulled forward and his 
hands in his pockets. “ That was toler’ble clever 
of your man,” he said to Tamsin. 

“ What was ?” 

“ He’s goin’ to stake me up for a new deal at 
somethin’. Tom Mills says he thought I’d turn 
out first-rate if he gave me a start. You tell him 
thanky, will ye ?” 

” Yes,” said Tamsin. She added spontaneously. 

He is good.” 

Consider’ble better’n some whole men I’ve 
knowed,” pronounced Jess. 

I bet you never put him up to it,” said Sarah 
Jane to Tamsin. 

They went away talking in an eager, sad duet : 
the eager tones were Jess’s, the plaintive ones 
Sarah Jane’s. 

There was a whippoorwill singing in one of the 
large trees beside the drive. The gurgle in his 
throat which precedes his cry could be distinctly 
heard. The barn-yard calves were complaining 
of their evening banishment from their mothers, 
with that lonesome, November-like cadence which 
always suggests thinning trees and a sharp wind 
around corners. But the summer night was deli- 
18 


206 


CRAQUE-O^-DOOM. 


cious ; it did not even lack a full moon. Far down 
the pike, the Barnet brass-band was blaring at 
great Apollo to strike the lyre ; the one ice-cream 
saloon was doing a rushing business, for a great 
many promenading couples made the evening fes- 
tive. 

Aunt Sally saw the mantel-clock point to nine, 
and took her bed-room candle. “ Is Tamsin up- 
stairs, Thomas ?” she inquired as she passed Jthe 
small library-door, within which her nephew was 
smoking in the moonlight. 

I don’t know. Probably she is.” 

“ Be sure to fasten the front door when you go.” 

Certainly,” said Tom. 

With Andrew Jackson Davis under her arm and 
her candle paling in the moonlight. Aunt Sally 
went up-stairs. 

When Captain Tom had smoked his cigar out, 
he got up and sauntered through the parlors, giv- 
ing no sign of what was in his mind or how he 
meant to occupy the rest of the evening. In the 
middle of the front parlor he stood still. “ Tam- 
sin,” he said, with an indefinite sting of pain in the 
word. He saw her lying face downward on a sofa, 
her white dress rising and falling in long breaths 
around the shoulders. She stirred, keeping the 
back of one hand over her eyes. What’s the 
matter ?” begged Captain Tom, seating himself on 
a chair by her head. He rested his arm on the 


A BROTHER. 


207 

back and leaned toward her with what he thought 
a very paternal air. What are you crying about 
here alone ?” 

For answer she broke into a fresh sob. 

“ My heavens !” said Tom, with a pang in his 
breast. “ Who has hurt you ?” He reassuringly 
took the hand from her eyes and held and patted 
it. It was warm and soft, and while he held it he 
began to tremble. “ Can’t you tell me ?” he mur- 
mured, modulating his voice so that it spunded 
strange to himself. “ Do you feel badly about 
your brother ?” He raised her to a sitting posture 
and saw her rested comfortably against the back 
of the sofa. With fatherly care he put a footstool 
to her feet, and then resumed his chair, reaching 
for her hands with an unaccountable impulse to 
draw her close to him. 

Tamsin looked into his kind eyes and revealed 
a new phase of herself. The silent stoic and the 
budding young lady were gone. She was a spirit 
struggling with the problems of her own being, — 
but a very pretty, warm, distracting spirit, con- 
scious or unconscious of her power. “ I never did 
like them,” she confessed. “I can’t do it. Tillie 
is the only one who seems related to me. It is 
horrible to feel so. When I looked at him, I 
thought of the brothers who came to see the girls 
at school. I should like to have a brother of that 
kind. He makes my flesh creep. I do not love 


208 


CRAQUE-O^-DOOM. 


my father and mother. If they were dead I could 
not cry one true tear. If Sam and Sarah Jane and 
all the rest — except Tillie — were to die, I should 
not miss them at all.” 

Tom kept patting and soothing her hand. 

“You never heard of anybody that way, did 
you ?” inquired Tamsin. 

“ Oh, yes : very few brothers and sisters are so 
closely united as Tillie and you are.” 

“ But why don’t I care for the rest of them ?” 

“ Natural antagonism,” explained Captain Tom. 
“ There are no points of sympathy between you. 
You are as different as if you came of other blood. 
It is useless to make yourself unhappy about it.” 

Tamsin rested against the back of the sofa and 
thought. “ I wish,” she said sincerely, “ that I 
had only had one sister, and that Tillie, and only 
one brother, and that you.” 

Tom Mills started up and walked to the other 
side of the room. 

Tamsin looked after him : “ Have I made you 
mad ?” 

“ No,” said Tom, returning. His eyes had a 
singular glow. “All my life I have missed my 
sister.” 

“ It would have been so nice,” continued Tam- 
sin. “ Before Mr. Sutton came I used to want to 
be related to you, and after he came I wanted it 
more than ever. What makes your hand so cold?” 


A BROTHER. 


209 

“ Is it cold ?” murmured the captain, looking at 
it stupidly. “ That must be because it has always 
missed a little hand like this.” 

I used to watch you, and be afraid of you.” 

“ Afraid of me ! Why ?” 

“ You seemed my idea of a gentleman ; and I — 
What was I ?” 

“ Always a rare girl, if I had had the wit to notice 
it,” said Tom with some bitterness. 

“ I always loved to be here,” still ruminated 
Tamsin. “ Why can’t people pick their relations ? 
I would have picked you from the very start. I 
hope you ain’t provoked because I feel so ?” 

No — no — heaven knows !” 

Home !” her eyes wandered around the moon- 
lit walls. “And I never could help calling her 
Aunt Sally ; and you — ” She turned her eyes 
back laughing to his face. 

He was as white as a statue ; his jet moustache 
added ghastliness to his face. He gripped her 
hand in palm and fingers which were jetting with 
blood hot from his heart. 

“ What’s the matter ?” asked Tamsin, startled, 
as he drew himself away from her and rose up, 
turning his back. 

“ Nothing,” replied Captain Mills, huskily. 

Almost as soon as he had spoken, there were 
feet on the door-steps and feet in the hall, a swish 
of clothes, the cough of a man, the sound of a 

o 18* 


210 


CRAQUE-a-DOOM. 


mellow voice which made Tom Mills want to stab 
himself, and of Rhoda Burns, exclaiming, “ Who 
is in here having such a remarkably cosey little 
tete-a-tUe that carriages rolling up and people 
arriving fail to disturb it ?’* 


CHAPTER XXII. ' 

TWO MEN. 

Tamsin rose and met the party with agitation. 
She kissed Rhoda, took Mr. Burns’s hand, and, last, 
stood like a young giantess with her hands in 
Craque-o’-Doom’s. 

Tom made a great stir about getting lights. But 
Neal and the cook were out making calls, and the 
matches eluded him. “ I had some in the library 
a little while ago, but don’t know where I put 
them,” said he. And he shook hands all around 
the group with a manner very different from his 
usual beneficent one. 

“Never mind candles,” said Rhoda: “they just 
draw bugs to bang against the screens or sail in at 
the door and land down your back. You seemed 
to be getting on charmingly without illumination 
when we came in.” 

“ Yes,” said Tamsin. “ I hate lights in summer. 


TIVO MEN. 


2II 


I sat on the step till long after the moon came 
up.” 

Thought Mrs. Burns to herself, I wonder how 
long this philandering has been going on ? And 
Tom Mills, of all men ! I never saw him look so 
agitated. Hasn’t she a particle of sense ? I could 
shake her !” 

They were grouped in seats, in and out of the 
moonshine. Rhoda unfastened her hat and scarf ; 
the two gentlemen sat with their hats in their 
hands. 

“Did you send your carriage to the stables?” 
inquired Tom. 

“ I didn’t bring mine this time,” said Craque-o’- 
Doom. “ We came in a conveyance from the sta- 
tion. Mr. and Mrs. Burns whirled me out here 
without any warning.” 

“ Yes,” said Rhoda ; “ we stumbled on him roast- 
ing in New York City, just by accident, at his 
favorite hotel.” 

“ It’s very hot in town,” remarked Mr. Burns. 
He fanned his face with his handkerchief, as if the 
recollection overpowered him. 

“ But I thought you were in Canada for the sum- 
mer, Craque-o’-Doom ?” said Tom. 

“I got tired of it sooner than I did last 
year.” 

“ You didn’t say a word about leaving in your 
last letter,” said Tamsin. She had resumed her 


212 


CJ^A Q UE- O'-D 0 OM. 


seat on the sofa, and Rhoda was sitting in the chair 
Tom had occupied. 

“ No ; I took a sudden fancy to run out here. 
Then I changed my mind and sent the carriage 
back. Then I met Mr. and Mrs. Burns, and we 
concluded to make a flying visit to Barnet and 
take you back with us to the sea-shore for the rest 
of the summer.” 

“ I had a little matter of business West,” mur- 
mured Mr. Burns, to explain his concurrence in 
such eccentric proceedings. I have to go on to 
Chicago.” 

” Don’t say flying visit,” urged Tom in a nerve- 
less voice. 

“ Come with us to Swampscott, Tom,” said 
Craque-o’-Doom. And Rhoda turned sharply 
round and looked at him. “ Mr. Burns has prom- 
ised us as much time as he can spare during the 
rest of the summer. We can make a comfortable 
party.” 

“ Fifth wheel to a coach,” said Tom. “ Bach- 
elors are always in the way. Louise and Jennie 
have just made us a visit,” he continued, address- 
ing Rhoda. 

“ I wish they had extended it ; only we might 
tax your aunt’s housekeeping pretty heavily. You 
haven’t told me how she is, or even noticed that I 
am just back from the grand tour.” 

*‘Oh, Aunt Sally is always well,” said Tom. 


TfVO MEN. 


213 

And you must remember I am just a provincial 
farmer, blind to tho splendors of travel. Provin- 
cial is the word, isn’t it, Mr. Burns ?” 

Mr. Burns laughed and rubbed his hands. “ Yes, 
that’s the word. Pretty good sort of word ; but I 
don’t like it myself. I don’t like New York airs.” 

“ I do,” said Rhoda. I like everything that 
suggests magnificence. If you will own to being 
provincial, I will glory in being cosmopolitan. 
We have had sumptuous times, haven’t we, Mr. 
Burns ?” 

Very,” he responded. 

” My head is stuffed full. I am richer by a 
grand division and many hundred years. Is that 
your aunt Sally coming down-stairs ?” 

It was Aunt Sally, in an immense wrapper. 
Her light sleep had been broken. She welcomed 
everybody, and had lights burning all over the 
house, and June-bugs bumping against them, and 
a hearty supper set out, and all the travellers’ 
wants attended to, before the minute-hand on the 
French clock had passed three characters. 

^‘Tamsin,” said Mrs. Burns, coming into her 
young friend’s virgin chamber when every inmate 
was supposed to be retiring, “ have you said a word 
to Mr. Sutton this evening?” 

“ Of course I have.” Tamsin had a downcast 
expression. She had her light hair around the 
shoulders of a very pretty tinted peignoir ^ and was 


214 


CRAQUE-O'-DOOM. 


brushing industriously. Rhoda also had her haii 
down and plied a vigorous brush. ‘‘ Do you think 
we shall really go to-morrow ?” 

“ Of course. It’s time, isn’t it ?” 

“ Then I wish Tillie had stayed here to-night. 
She has slept with me every night but this since I 
came back. She took a freak to stay at home to- 
night.” 

“ Have you had a pleasant summer?’* 

“ Oh, such a pleasant one ! I have had her with 
me so much. The other day we went out to the 
grave-yard, and sat in the grass and talked as we 
used to do when we were children.” 

” Children ! what are you now ?” sniffed Mrs. 
Burns. That must have been very cheerful.” 

“ It was. — I wish she was here.” 

“ Tamsin,” said Rhoda boldly, what were 
you and Captain Mills doing when we came 
in ?” 

“ Doing ?” The girl raised her black eyes as if 
with a sudden effort at recollection. “ Why, talk- 
ing, of course.” 

“ What tender subject occupied you ?” 

“ I shan’t tell you,” replied Tamsin, after turning 
the matter over in her mind. ** I don’t have to 
tell everybody how I feel.” 

Rhoda sat down by her and put a hand on her 
lap. The girl’s eyes met hers with great wistful- 
ness : the oval face looked so innocent. “ She is 


T^fV MEN. 


215 

the slyest flirt I ever saw,” thought Rhoda, “ or 
else the most guileless of women.” 

“ You delicious young fiend !” she exclaimed, 
** I am equally divided whether to shake you or 
fall upon you and devour you with kisses. Have 
you been making fools of any men this summer ? 
Not to mince matters, have you transfixed this 
silly old Tom Mills, with his white poll and black 
moustache and years of what ought to be discre- 
tion ?” 

Tamsin pushed back her hair and flashed a 
glance at Rhoda which was actually haughty. 
“ I’m married !” she said, as if this were a sufficient 
reminder. 

“Yes, I know you are; but how are you to 
realize it, living as you do ? And plenty of mar- 
ried women flirt, you will find as you go on.” 

“ If you think that,” said Tamsin, retiring an 
inch from Rhoda, evidently smarting with a new 
sting which neutralized the old, “ I don’t care what 
you know. My brother got out of— jail. You 
don’t know how I feel.” 

“ My dear !” exclaimed Rhoda affectionately. 

“ I wished I had had a brother like Captain 
Mills. He has always been a nice man. I want,” 
she burst out passionately, “ I do want nice rela- 
tions !” And, turning her back on Rhoda, she hid 
her head in a. pillow. 

Mrs. Burns was about to begin a dissertation on 


2i6 


C/?A QUE-O'-DO OM. 


the ridiculous folly of that platonism between the 
sexes known as “brothering” and “ sistering” 
each other, but the door opened without warning, 
and Tillie came in. She had reached the front 
door just as Aunt Sally was herself locking it for 
the night. Her hair was damp with dew : the 
odors of hay-fields and sweet sod were suggested 
by her untrammelled presence. 

“ I couldn’t stay away, Tam,” said the child. 
She gave a ” How do you do ?” to the new lady, 
and huddled on the bed by her sister. 

” They are a couple of Phoebe-birds,” thought 
Rhoda as she retired. “ Pm not half as brilliant 
in the management of human nature as I thought 
I was.” 

Meanwhile, Captain Tom was crouching against 
the mantel in Craque-o’-Doom’s room. The dwarf 
was half lying on the bed, with a pillow under his 
elbow. ” Is that all ?” said he. 

I think it’s enough,” said Tom. “ I give you 
my word I behaved like a man and a gentleman 
till to-night. Pm growing daft in my mature years. 
When I came in and found her crying, you can’t 
picture my sensations.” 

“ Oh, yes, I can.” 

“ I had an affair once that I thought would keep 
me from ever thinking of a woman again.” 

The dwarf looked up with interest. 

She died. I expected to live a bachelor, and 


TPVO MEN. 


217 

have never since thought of myself as a marrying 
man. It sounds odd : I don’t speak of it, for people 
would consider it ridiculous. I can see how I came 
to make such an ass of myself to-night. All sum- 
mer this one has been thrown on my care; I 
watched her, and studied her, and grew to her, as 
you might say.” 

“Yes; that’s where I was wrong. It was my 
fault,” said the dwarf. 

“ How did you know I had such a weak spot?” 
continued Tom. “ Throw the blame on me, where 
it belongs. All at once I came upon her sobbing 
as if her heart would break, — I know all her draw- 
backs — Oh, heavens ! how a man’s heart will 
yearn !” 

“Yes, how it will yearn!” breathed the dwarf, 
covering his face with hands which had grown 
almost gaunt. 

“ So I said, and did what I told you, and half 
compromised her in your eyes and the eyes of the 
other two.” 

When the dwarf had been silent a minute he 
seemed to have collected his forces, and said, 
“ Tom, I hope you won’t mind my saying I think 
of her and not of you ?” 

“ Certainly not. What consideration do I 
merit ?” 

“ You are a good fellow, and I have liked you 
well, and taxed your friendship more than I ought 
K 19 


2i8 


CRAQUE-a-DOOM, 


to have done. But, Tom, I could willingly stran- 
gle you where her happiness is involved. The 
great question with me is. Does she love you ?” 

“ No, she doesn’t. Of course not.” 

“Tom, she has known you all her life. You 
were, as she said, her idea of a gentleman. Be- 
sides, you are a man to match with a beautiful, 
perfectly-made woman. What am I ? A twist of 
nature, a man-monkey, whose most dignified ges- 
ture is ridiculous. I have been struggling against 
the tide. I have believed it possible for her to care 
for me : I don’t believe it any more. Why, her re- 
pugnance overcame her so she ran from me, once ! 
Her affections— and they are strong in proportion 
to the narrow scope they take — are bound around 
this place and you. You must take her; and, by 
God ! if you ever make her unhappy I will shoot 
you with my own hands !” 

“ Old fellow, you can shoot me and welcome. I 
couldn’t feel much worse than I do. But exercise 
a little common sense. One man doesn’t marry 
another man’s wife in this country, no matter 
how much he may have courted her,” the captain 
sneered down at himself. 

“She isn’t any more my wife than she is yours. 
I gave her the protection of my name and guar- 
dianship, and she’s nothing but my ward. In these 
days it won’t be hard to cut the slim legal tie which 
binds us together. You may remember I mentioned 


TPVO MEN. 


219 

some such possible emergency when I first spoke 
about taking her. You can marry her and make 
her happy. If any odium attaches to her, it will 
be, like the rest of her drawbacks, her misfortune 
and not her fault. Confound you! why didn*tj/ou 
think of giving her a chance ?” 

“ Why didn’t I ? I’m a pretty kind of a fellow 
for a man to resign in favor of, ain’t I ? Now, you 
listen to me:” Tom approached and sat on the 
bed. “ You’re working yourself to a high pitch for 
nothing.” 

‘‘Are you going to say you wouldn’t have her ?” 
Craque-o’-Doom’s eyes narrowed themselves to 
fierce gray slits. 

“ Have her ? you don’t want to make a fool of 
yourself, asking me that ? I tell you, she crept in 
on me unawares. You ought to slap my face for 
it, but I love her. A man can’t say more than 
that, if he’s a man with red blood in his body. 
What does a man generally want to do when such 
a thing happens to him ? But she wouldn’t have 
me, even if all was fair and open. She was as cool 
as a mermaid. She thinks I’m a good old fellow — 
trustworthy in the main — and would make a cred- 
itable relation ; and that’s all she thinks about me.” 

“ You held her hands ?” said Craque-o’-Doom. 

“ Yes, and she wondered that mine were cold 
and trembling, and wa%as much moved as if I 
had been my aunt Sally.” 


220 


CRAQUE-O'-DOOM. 


** But she didn’t run from you ; she confided in 
you.” 

“ Yes, I happened to be handy when she was in , 
a troubled mood. Now, don’t take this matter 
with so much confounded seriousness : I have 
been a fool, and have got to smart many a day 
for my folly. She is an innocent child who has 
been drawn into an absurd situation without reali- 
zing it. That’s all there is about it.” 

“ Tom,” said Craque-o’-Doom, still pursuing his 
own train of thought, “ come down to Swampscott 
with us.” 

Captain Tom laughed, but looked at him sadly: 

I’m going to start for the Pacific coast as soon 
as you folks are gone.” 

“ What for?” 

“ For medicine. I’ve meant to go a long time, 
and this furnishes the occasion.” 

” Will your aunt go?” 

“ If I can persuade her. I think she has some 
relations in San Francisco, — a brother-in-law’s 
family. We’ve often talked of the trip, and there’s 
no time like the present.” 

Tom, bless you, old fellow !” said Craque-o’- 
Doom. After a space he added, “ I owe you this 
much, anyhow. If there’s a turn in my favor 
within six months. I’ll let you know by telegraph ; 
if there isn’t by the end ^f that time, we’ll meet 
somewhere and settle the thing.” 


TPVO MEN. 


221 


“ That’s all nonsense !” said Tom. “ Don’t talk 
so crazy, boy. You’ve changed since last year.” 

“ Yes, I have. I can’t stand this much longer. 
It has been a hard mill. A lifetime of prepara- 
tion for a lonely middle and old age has been de- 
stroyed in a few months. I had no idea this sort 
of feeling could work on a man so.” 

” I’d better say good-night,” said Captain Tom. 

“ Well, good-night.” 

The two men did an unpremeditated thing. 
Opening their arms, they hugged one another for 
one silent instant, and then parted, half shame- 
faced. 


19' 


222 


CRAQUE-O^-DOOM, 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

“place hands.” 

The party started next afternoon, and again 
Tillie stood on the platform beside Captain Mills. 
Her father had refused, with the stubbornness of 
an unreasonable old man, to let her go with Tarn- 
sin for even a month’s stay beside the water. 
Tillie took occasion this time to very scantily 
commend the dwarf. “You’re a pretty nice kind 
of a feller,” she said, looking into his face with un- 
terrified eyes. They stood quite on a level when 
he had his hat on. 

“ I thank my little sister for that,” he replied, 
with a bow, — which caused Tillie to put her hand 
before her mouth and laugh and take some unseen 
confidante into the joke : “ Ho ! he called me his 
little sister !” 

Tamsin stood on the -back platform and ex- 
changed signals with the lank light child until 
what had been Tillie became a mere speck beside 
a toadstool station and then went out in the dazzle 
of the afternoon sun. 

The dwarf’s party found but an uncanny coast 
when they arrived at his summer cottage. There 




PLACE hands: 


was no storm, but a sullen fit of rainy weather set 
in, stinging the sea with perpetual javelins, the 
handles of which barred distant views. The east 
wind prevailed, and they had two dismal August 
weeks, soaked with fog, very salt, wherein the 
roar of the sea only tempted man to suicide. It 
was too chilly to bathe ; there were no chances to 
make excursions; fires could not drive out the 
dampness. A great many nice people in cottages 
round about rolled themselves up in rugs and hi- 
bernated, while others prepared to go back to town 
a full month earlier than usual. 

Craque-o’-Doom tried a piano he had in the 
house, but the strings were all rusted ; it was 
horribly out of tune. Instead of seeking the 
society of the ladies, he stayed a great deal by 
himself, pressing and classifying sea-weeds which 
his man brought him from the sand, — a tall ser- 
vant, who went and came under an umbrella and 
looked as if life were not worth living when the 
umbrella occasionally turned wrong side out. 

Rhoda wrote letters to her husband in Chicago, 
and was in a craze over house-furnishing. Tamsin 
sat with her before the fire, holding a book, and 
they had long woman-talks, which began and 
ended nowhere and were like the foam left by the 
out-crawling tide, — they only marked the hours. 
** I never saw such weather,” said Rhoda, “ or 
knew the fall to threaten so early. The papers 


CRAQUE-O'^-DOOM. 


224 

say it is just as bad inland, and clear out West. 
We had better pick up and leave. Mr. Sutton is 
moping himself to death. Don’t you see he is ?” 

“ He looks paler than he did last spring,” said 
Tamsin. She fixed her black eyes seriously on 
the fire. “ He studies a great deal. All the time 
he is learning something new.” 

“ His health may be failing,” said Rhoda. 

“ Why, how can that be ?” exclaimed Tamsin. 

He never has a doctor. He is not sick.” 

“ He is not particularly well,” said Rhoda sagely. 
“ Men have the instincts of wild creatures when 
anything ails them ; they mope by themselves and 
* act injured.’” 

There came a day on which the sun showed a 
watery eye and the sea looked a shade lighter. 

“ Maybe we can go somewhere to-day without 
getting soaked,” exclaimed Tamsin. 

Craque-o’-Doom handed her a letter from the 
package the tall servant brought in : And here’s 
a letter from Tillie, too.” 

It was Mary’s hand, of course. Mary was 
Tillie’s amanuensis. Craque-o’-Doom examined 
his mail, and Rhoda was tearing the wrappers 
from hers. Neither of them observed her eyes 
dilate or her free hand lift and clinch itself. 
“ Oh !” she cried, “ oh ! — oh ! — oh !” each scream 
becoming more piercing. She is dead — They 
have buried her in the ground!” So, tottering 


PLACE hands: 


toward the dwarf, Tamsin fell down with her arm 
across his knees. She had not fainted. They got 
her up, and she sat ghastly and shaking in a large 
chair. Craque-o’-Doom rubbed her hands, while 
Rhoda bathed her face. Her screams still rang 
through the house, though they told her it could 
not be true, and the man whose heart she pierced 
talked wildly to her. 

Tamsin was like a giantess in her grief. She 
pushed her comforters aside and writhed about the 
room, supported by Rhoda against her will, with 
her hair streaming around her face. Craque-o’- 
Doom huddled at the chimney-side, straightening 
the letter out and trying to read it. He felt numb, 
and so widely separated from her now that he 
dared not offer her one word. Rhoda got her to 
her own room, and was busy over her for a long 
time. Finally, Craque-o’-Doom looked up, aware 
that Rhoda stood on the hearth-rug, pale and 
troubled in expression. It must be true,” said 
he, indicating the paper he held. ‘‘ What can I 
do ? I feel dazed.” 

“ Yes, it’s true. From what she has been re- 
peating over and over I know the contents of the 
letter. It’s come upon her in the cruellest way.” 

“ Is she any better ?” 

“ She’s unconscious, and will be better. I have 
her under the influence of chloral.” 

I’d better telegraph to some responsible per- 


226 


CRAQUE-a-DOOM. 


son in Barnet/’ said the dwarf. “ Tom and his 
aunt are gone. If they had been there it wouldn’t 
have come to her in this way.” 

No, indeed,” affirmed Rhoda. 

“You see I can’t shield her from a single 
trouble.” His head dropped on his breast. 
“ She’ll hate me. Sometimes I think it was for 
Tillie— ” 

“ Don’t say it,” entreated Rhoda, putting a hand 
on his shoulder. “ After you send this telegram, 
I think you had better have treatment similar to 
Tamsin’s and go to bed.” 

“ If you will take care of her,” he said with 
quick resolution, “I will go to Barnet myself, and 
if they won’t let me bring the body away, I may 
pick up some kind of consolation for her.” 

“ Don’t you do it. Was there ever such a^aian ! I 
wish Mr. Burns were here, to make you be quiet.” 

“ I don’t want to be quiet. You’ll let me know 
if she falls ill, won’t you ?” 

“Yes; but she won’t be seriously sick: she’s 
strong. It’s the effect of the shock.” 

“ If I could have seen the letter first, afid pre- 
pared her.” 

“Yes, if you could surround her by a medium 
through which no pain could pass, — if you could 
make an out-and-out goddess of her. Mr. Sutton, 
Claude Melnottes are charming on the stage, but 
in real life they are painful.” 


PLACE hands: 


“Grotesque, you mean, in my shape. Well, 
good friend, don’t mind me.” 

He left the room, and Rhoda in her turn 
picked up Mary Chenoworth’s letter. It was 
brief enough, written in a delicate, half-formed 
hand, and frequently misspelled : 

“ Dear Sister I take up my pen to tell you 
death has Entered since you left Tillie died the 
day befour yesterday and we buried her to-day 
She got sore Throat after you left and it run on to 
Dipthery the weather being so bad that the first 
thing I knowed they sent for me Tillie is dying 
She died very easy at the last though Suffering 
much before and she wanted you Sary Jane said 
the Whole time Pap sayed they did not know 
where to Write to you for sertain and nobody 
thout she would die She plaid her cordeon the 
very day she died the deer Innocent the very last 
Thing she done was to slick her piller and whisper 
Place Hands 

You must excuse my writing I ain’t the scribe 
I used to be and my eyes ache and Smart 

Tamsin I wish he had let her go with you It 
mite not have happened but God knows Jess is 
doing reel well now We buried her in her White 
dress you give her O Tamsin i know what your 
Feeling will be for she was deer to you 

“ Respectfuly your sister, Mary.” 


228 


CRA Q UE- O'-D 0 OM. 


Tamsin woke in the night and sobbed with her 
first conscious breath. A night-lamp was shaded 
near her head. She heard the boom of the sea, 
and her imagination threw up — like a mirage over 
her trouble — a vision of schooners poised on the 
water as if it were a wall hemming in the land. 

Rhoda appeared beside her as soon as she made 
a sound, changed the cloths on her head, and said, 
“ My dear, you must take another spoonful of this 
liquid.” 

Tamsin took it and looked all about the room 
with her heavy eyes. 

“ He’s gone,” said Rhoda. 

The patient seemed to drag her eyes to her 
nurse’s face. “ Where ?” 

“ To Ohio. To do anything he can that will be 
a comfort to you.” 

“ I wanted,” said Tamsin, swooning under the 
strong sleeping-mixture, “ I wanted — ” 


YOU OUGHT TO KNOW: 


229 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

**YOU OUGHT TO KNOW.’' 

It was full two weeks afterward that the dwarf 
sat at home before a library-table covered with 
books and papers. He did indeed seem lost in 
the square, stately room. There was hardly a stir 
of life about the premises. From his windows he 
could see the hills standing as companions to him 
in that dear fellowship hills always extend toward 
us, and a blue corner of the North River across 
which a long tow of barges and flats was moving 
up-stream. The afternoon was nearly gone : 
Craque-o’-Doom worked as if bent on accomplish- 
ing a certain task in a limited time. His temples 
were sunken : the luminous quality of his com- 
plexion had never been so apparent. His feet 
rested on a very high hassock under the table, 
and perhaps, with his mind absorbed by the prob- 
lems which occupy higher grades of intellect, he 
forgot during half an hour that he was not as 
other men. 

He had come directly home from Barnet instead 
of going back to Tamsin, and asked no explana- 
tion of himself for doing so. She was to enter 
20 


230 


CjRA Q UE- a-D 0 OM. 


school the first week in September. Mrs. Burns 
stayed on with her, and reported frequently to him, 
encouraging him to think that time would rapidly 
heal the grief of such a young creature. 

From Tamsin he got no message at all. But he 
had written her a long letter full of the minutest 
items concerning Tillie. Old Mr. Chenoworth had 
not allowed him to remove the body: he had 
therefore ornamented that plot in Barnet grave- 
yard with everything he could devise. He had 
ordered a small monument, and drawn the design 
himself, — the child’s accordion, with a branch of 
wild-brier thrown across it, — and he enclosed a 
draft of it to Tamsin. He had even been woman- 
ish enough to pick some clay from Tillie’s hillock 
before it was sodded and send that. All the kind 
things the neighbors had to say about the child’s 
last days were retailed by him, and her mother’s 
account was minutely repeated. He had nothing 
to say, however, of the inconveniences and painful 
curiosity he had had to encounter in that small 
place, without a friend or acquaintance, while gath- 
ering these consolations for her, or of the cruel 
stupidity of her family, and the general opinion 
that they had let the child die from ignorant neg- 
lect. He did not tell her that her father had com- 
fortably reckoned “ he hadn’t no money to waste 
in such tomfoolery,” when asked why he did not 
telegraph for Tamsin. Neither did he mention 


YOU OUGHT TO KNOW.' 


Sarah Jane’s criticism of the accordion and brier 
branch and her loud preference for a little lamb on 
the monument, such as most well-to-do Barnet 
families displayed on their children’s mortuary tab- 
lets. He spared her the news that Jess, perhaps 
overcome by the family bereavement, had broken 
bounds again and was out of prison on the dwarf’s 
bail, determined to go West when he got through 
with his last difficulty, and find more scope or 
something worse. But, on the other hand, he did 
not forget Mary’s tearful recital, and he beautified 
her in her humble state. He had talked with 
Mary in her own house, while her tow-headed 
children peeped round the door-post at him and 
dared one another to approach nearer. Never in 
her life had she felt herself so appreciated or 
touched the edge of a human soul that could so 
widen the world for her. 

The dwarf had agreed with Mrs. Burns that 
Tamsin must go back to school as soon as possi- 
ble : her mind ought to be occupied. 

But, if any of these things rose to the surface 
of his thoughts, he pushed them under. Some 
wagons rattled along the road, and he heard the 
five-o’clock train from New York roaring at the 
base of the hills. Through open windows came 
in that sun-soaked smell of grass and shrubs which 
seems to be their grateful offering for a fine day. 
This was a very handsome, comfortable, dull old 


232 


CRAQUE-O’-DOOM. 


place. Now a shutter cracked sharply, — it is 
strange how many sympathetic noises there are in 
wood, — as if uttering an exclamation of relief that 
the sun no longer blistered it ; and now the double 
gates at the end of the avenue clicked, and the 
gardener probably moved away through the grass 
to his tool-house. 

There were a great many neighbors bound to 
the dwarf by old family ties, but, living by him- 
self, he had few visitors. It was with some amaze- 
ment, therefore, after being startled by these various 
hints of outside life, that he looked up and saw a 
woman coming into the room from the outer hall. 
But, when the face became Tamsin’s, the air thick- 
ened before his eyes, and he did not speak a 
word. 

Tamsin approached the table. She was in black 
clothes : her eyes looked sunken, yet the livid 
spaces around them brought out their power the 
more. She halted, then came on, resting her hand 
on the table as she had done the night they first 
met. And the dwarf looked at her without having 
a word, until it seemed to him an eternity passed 
between them. “ I’ve come,” said Tamsin. And 
she still looked at him with that in her eyes 
which made his pulses all seem beating in his 
head. 

“ Yes,” he finally uttered. ‘‘ Sit down, my child. 
You may take this chair.” He pushed it back 


YOU OUGHT TO KNOW: 


from the table and held to the arms. “ Tm dizzy,” 
said the dwarf. “These papers have bothered 
me.” So he remained seated, and Tamsin stood 
still, folding corners of his manuscript over and 
over. 

“ Did you come alone?” he inquired. 

“ Yes : Mrs. Burns has gone home. She left me 
at school.” 

“ And how did you get here from the station ?” 

“ I asked the way and walked.” 

“Sit down; sit down here.” The dwarf drew 
out the hassock, and Tamsin sat down, literally at 
his feet. 

He unfastened her hat and wrap and laid them 
on the table and began taking off her gloves : 
“ Crape from head to foot. How unhappy my 
little one is ! So many times I have thought what 
your coming to this house would be; and you 
come alone, without any glad welcome, to the 
man who has failed to make you happy ! You got 
the letter and the little box?” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Is there anything else on earth that I can do ?” 

“ Yes,” burst passionately from her lips: “yes, 
there is.” 

“ Tell me what.” 

The young creature bent her head forward and 
rested it on the arm of his chair. She looked very 
young and dependent. “ I can’t,” she said. 

20 * 


234 


CRAQUE-a-DOOM. 


Craque-o’-Doom lifted her face up, saying 
sternly, “You must!” 

Tamsin began to cry. She was so weak that 
her sobs became hysterical cries, and the dwarf 
was in a frenzy. He reached for his table-bell : 
“ You must have something. They ought to bring 
you some food.” 

“ I don’t want it. I can’t — can’t — can’t stand 
this 1” With a shaking hand he smoothed her 
hair back from her burning forehead and rested 
her against his arm until she grew quieter. Gradu- 
ally her head dropped backward and she fixed her 
eyes on his : “ Before Tillie died I could stand it. 
She loved me so much, and I had so many things 
to learn. Now I can’t stand it. You have been 
better than an angel to me. You have done every- 
thing kind.” 

“Speak out,” said Craque-o’-Doom, his ears 
ringing with strange noises. 

“ I can’t I I never could talk. But — ” She 
pressed her palms together in supplication. 

“ Do you mean,” said the dwarf slowly, seeming 
to expand while he spoke, “ that you want to stay 
here with me ?” 

Her face steeped itself in color. 

“ Oh, Tamsin ! What makes you tremble, little 
one ?” 

“ I don’t know,” she whispered piteously, reach- 
ing her hands toward his shoulders; '' do you V 


YOU OUGHT TO KNOW,' 


For the first time in his life he held his wife 
against his face and breast. The throbbing of her 
pulses talked to him. They told him she was 
young and proud and full of virgin timidity ; but 
they also told him another secret, which never let 
him doubt his possession of her again. “ Is it 
possible,” he said, breaking the silence of the room, 
“ that henceforward this lonesome house will be 
full of you ? Is it possible that in spite of my 
deformity you love me ?” 

“You ought to know,” said Tamsin. “Didn’t 
I marry you ? It was from the very first. I never 
cared for anybody but Tillie before. But you 
wanted me just to improve myself. And I acted 
so foolish about things.” She dropped brief sen- 
tence after sentence, sometimes catching her voice 
in her throat. A listener two yards away could 
not have distinguished the words. “ When I car- 
ried that coffee into your room, you seemed differ- 
ent from all the people I ever dreamed of. Some- 
times I have been very mad and very hurt. You 
would go off* other places where you could not see 
me. Then I would act as if I did not care. What 
was I, compared to a man like you ? I was a poor 
miserable girl. If I had been related to the Millses 
I shouldn’t have felt so badly. You were better 
to father’s than I ever was. You aren’t like I am. 
I’ll try to be better. I’ll try for Tillie’s sake. Tillie 
knew. I told her in her ear one night when I was 


CJ?A Q UE- O' -D O OM. 


236' 

crying. The little dear hugged me. Once Mrs. 
Burns was saying it was such a good match for 
me. She made me feel sick. I began to tell her 
— but I couldn’t.” 

The dwarf kept smoothing her head with a 
gloating leonine touch. He scarcely noticed that 
he was doing so. His eyes brooded over her with 
that expression of blessing which we see in the 
eyes of pictured saints. “ But isn’t my deformity 
ever repulsive to you, my darling ?” 

“ No ; I don’t think about that.” 

“ Such excuses for legs, that lower me in the 
world almost among creeping things.” 

Tamsin looked indignant. “You seem real 
tall,” she said. 

“ Do I seem tall to you ? Haven’t you felt like 
laughing at me when I waddled about, looking 
as if my body had been telescoped in a railroad 
accident, for instance? You can’t enjoy gazing 
down a couple of feet or so on your husband and 
overhearing remarks which may be made at any 
time.” 

“ I don’t care what they say,” his wife exclaimed 
in a candid gush of words. “ It’s because they want 
you themselves and can’t get you, or don’t know 
how to appreciate a man. I think you’re beau- 
tiful !” 

Craque-o’-Doom laughed so heartily and so 
long that the house echoed in astonishment. 


*‘¥01/ OUGHT TO KNOW: 


“ Poor deluded child !” said he, but immediately 
afterward hid his face in her hair and shook with 
a heart-quaking sob. Having got the better of 
that, he raised his head and laughed again. “ Be- 
I fore we ring the bell and order a great dinner and 
make an occasion of my wife’s coming home, I 
must send the news to Tom.” 

“ What for?” inquired Tamsin. 

“ Because I agreed to telegraph the event to 
him. And I didn’t think it would be so soon.” 
His eye searched the littered table for a despatch- 
blank. Tamsin handed him the required slip, pen 
and ink, and his tablets. With his hand poised 
to write, he exclaimed, looking down the oval 
of her cheek, “ Your school ! I had forgotten 
that.” 

“ Can’t I go on here ?” 

Certainly you can. Under my own eye.” 

The despatch said, — 

“ Dear Tom, — My wife and I are at home to- 
gether at last. Congratulate us. 

“ Craque-o’-Doom.” 

To which Captain Mills, in a few days, responded 
from’ the Pacific coast, — 

Heaven bless you both ! 

‘^Tom” 


CRAQUE-a-DOOM. 


238 

It may be added as a postscript to this tale that 
a little more than two years later Captain Mills 
replied to another message with a duplicate of the 
above telegram, and an addition. 

Heaven bless you both, and Miss Craque-o’- 
Doom also. I send cup marked ‘ Tillie.’ 


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